AMERICAN DIGEST: The Americans Archives

The Americans

How the Final Fools Were Sucked Into The Bubble

A Century-21 Come-On ad from about a year ago, just before the first hiss of air escaping from the housing bubble began to be audible. I wonder where this couple is today. The hectoring agressive wife is no doubt kicking herself that a divorce just won't bring her the money she needs...

Continued...

Posted by Vanderleun at Aug 15, 2007 11:22 AM | Comments (8) | QuickLink:

Bad News on the Weekend

Posted by Vanderleun at Jul 29, 2004 5:56 PM | QuickLink:

The 80th Airborne: Bush From Above

capt.djp10106131859.bush_birthday_djp101.jpg

Former U.S. President George H.W. Bush comes in for a landing after performing a tandem parachute jump with Army Golden Knight Sgt. Bryan Schnell, on the grounds of the Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas June 13, 2004. It was the second of two tandem jumps Bush made on Sunday to celebrate his 80th birthday

-- Yahoo! News

Posted by Vanderleun at Jun 13, 2004 12:22 PM | Comments (3) | QuickLink:

Pictures of the Gone World

Click for larger view

From William Gedney's photographic chronicle of San Francisco, 1966-1967 comes this startling photo of Pigpen of the Grateful Dead backstage at a concert in 1967.

Posted by Van der Leun at Sep 26, 2003 6:50 PM | QuickLink:

On the Move

by Thom Gunn

'Man, You Gotta Go.'

The blue jay scuffling in the bushes follows
Some hidden purpose, and the gush of birds
That spurts across the field, the wheeling swallows,
Have nested in the trees and undergrowth.
Seeking their instinct, or their pose, or both,
One moves with an uncertain violence
Under the dust thrown by a baffled sense
Or the dull thunder of approximate words.

On motorcycles, up the road, they come:
Small, black, as flies hanging in heat, the Boy,
Until the distance throws them forth, their hum
Bulges to thunder held by calf and thigh.
In goggles, donned impersonality,
In gleaming jackets trophied with the dust,
They strap in doubt--by hiding it, robust--
And almost hear a meaning in their noise.

Exact conclusion of their hardiness
Has no shape yet, but from known whereabouts
They ride, directions where the tires press.
They scare a flight of birds across the field:
Much that is natural, to the will must yield.
Men manufacture both machine and soul,
And use what they imperfectly control
To dare a future from the taken routes.

It is part solution, after all.
One is not necessarily discord
On Earth; or damned because, half animal,
One lacks direct instinct, because one wakes
Afloat on movement that divides and breaks.
One joins the movement in a valueless world,
Crossing it, till, both hurler and the hurled,
One moves as well, always toward, toward.

A minute holds them, who have come to go:
The self-denied, astride the created will.
They burst away; the towns they travel through
Are home for neither birds nor holiness,
For birds and saints complete their purposes.
At worse, one is in motion; and at best,
Reaching no absolute, in which to rest,
One is always nearer by not keeping still.

Posted by Vanderleun at Jul 1, 2003 1:08 PM | QuickLink:

Scarface and Friends on Camera

Al Capone's mug shot, one of several, from an excellent online gallery, at Gang Rule. Mugs, portraits, and assorted photographs from the decades when gang and mafia rule in New York was unquestioned.

Posted by Vanderleun at Jun 24, 2003 9:20 AM | QuickLink:

The Cowgirl and the Four Pound Steak

Cowgirl Ready for Red Meat Olympics

We've stopped at the Big Texan Steak House in Amarillo. We have eaten their steaks and tipped their waitresses. We have seen the shrine at the front in which, daily, a new example of "The Monster" 72-Ounce steak reigns on a bed of ice. it is a stunning thing to behold and an even more awe inspiring to imagine eating one. It simply doesn't look possible to fit the steak on the ice into your body. We don't care what size body you come with. Big men have tried and failed. Hungry men have tried and failed -- but they were not hungry for days after.

No, it is no small thing to attempt to eat four pounds of beef in an hour. That's why we were stopped cold by the item in Saturday's Washington Post that chronicled a woman's quest to conquer the Big Beef. Described in excruciating

Continued...

Posted by jackreno at Jun 22, 2003 10:44 PM | Comments (1) | QuickLink: