You Are My King Of The Fall

Dali and Umani. Sweet Lady Jane and Disney Hall. Camus and a liquor store.

Synchronicity is everywhere. Or maybe it’s just seems that way, when there are similarities between unrelated objects.

The shape of Umami Burger’s logo, which resembles a hamburger bun, also brings to mind (well, my mind, anyway) Hercule Poirot’s mustache, Dali’s iconic Mae West lips sofa or Lee Miller’s lips in the Man Ray’s Heure de l’Obervatoire.

Of course Frank Gehry didn’t model Disney Hall after a delicious Sweet Lady Jane chocolate taco. (But wouldn’t it be great if he had?)

I love the sign for You Are My King Liquor, at the confusing triangular intersection of Fairfax, Olympic and San Vicente. The Fall by Camus has a serif treatment, You Are My King does not. Even so, both the book cover and store signage tell a story of ascension and decline through typography.

Umami Burger | 850 South La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90036 | 323 391 3000

Sweet Lady Jane | 8360 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90069 | 323 653 7145

You Are My King Liquor | at Fairfax, San Vicente and Olympic, Los Angeles

Dress For Dinner; Use A Napkin

Oh, don’t dress up on my account. You look fine. Besides, it’s just me, you and the fried chicken microwave dinner. You look great. Really -- really great.

Will the Real Mad Man Please Stand Up?

Tonight is the Season Three Mad Men premiere. (With limited commercial interruptions!)

In honor of the new season, here’s a link to a Chicago Magazine article about Draper Daniels, the legendary advertising creative whose real-life experiences shape the Don Draper character on Mad Men.

The Chicago article was written by Myra Junco Daniels, who first met Draper Daniels when their respective ad agencies merged; she later succumbed to his persistent wooing and married him unexpectedly, to the surprise of their families and agency staff.

Mad Men Season Three Premiere | AMC | 10 p.m.

When Life Gives You Lemons...

... make lemon meringue pie. (Today, August 15, is National Lemon Meringue Pie Day!)

Camus: Existentialist? Absurdist? Comic Genius?

Forty nine years after the death of Albert Camus (car accident, January 4, 1960), the debate continues: was Camus an existentialist? Or was he an absurdist?

Camus refuted both labels, but maybe these two terms did define him. Existentialists are often funny by accident. Absurdists, by nature, are supposed to be funny. Camus was funny.

Here are some quotes from The Fall, his 1956 confessional-style novel, which he published one year before winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, and four years before his death in a car accident. Here goes:

* There are always reasons for murdering a man. On the contrary, it is impossible to justify his living.

* Alas, after a certain age every man is responsible for his face.

* ...style, like sheer silk, too often hides eczema.

* I had principles, to be sure, such as that the wife of a friend is sacred. But I simply ceased quite sincerely, a few days before, to feel any friendship for the husband.

* ...I don't believe there is a single person I loved that I didn't eventually betray. Of course, my betrayals didn't stand in the way of my fidelity...

* He (the Lord) simply wanted to be loved, nothing more. Of course, there are those who love him, even among Christians.

* One plays at being immortal and after a few weeks one doesn't even know whether or not one can hang on till the next day.

* A single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read the papers.

Go To Your Lonely Place

An angry, washed-up screenwriter, Dixon Steele (Humphrey Bogart).

A new neighbor, Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame).

Adjacent garden court apartments.

A dead hat-check girl.

An alibi.

A love affair.

A loss of trust.

Welcome to the lush, shadowy world of In a Lonely Place, my favorite film noir, aside from those other two or three that I love best.

I found a blog that says everything I wish I’d said about Nicholas Ray’s romance gone bad, referencing Camus, Sartre, and all of the essential demons, including self-obsession, delusion, malaise, rage, repression and personal horror that I wish I could have written about half as well. But I didn’t; someone else did. If you want to read it, click here.

Or maybe you’ll see the movie -- I can’t urge you enough to put it on your watch list. And if you have seen it, then you already know that getting a massage is dangerous; it can lead to innuendo, gossip, tragedy and heartbreak. No good can come of it, but, by golly, you deserve a catharsis, and besides, you set up the shiatsu appointment weeks ago.

“I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me.” — Dixon Steele to Laurel Gray, reading an excerpt from his screenplay that mirrors the shards of his own life.

One-Liners

Today is National Fortune Cookie Day. So, if you’re short on time and can’t run out for Kung Pao, click here to visit one of the world's worst-designed web sites to get your fortune without the bother of acquiring a cookie. Or better yet, rent the movie.