Sunday, February 17, 2008

Record Keeping

Here's a lovely item picked up at a garage sale a while back. Measuring 4*5 inches, I imagine this booklet was available in the stationery department of the local dimestore.



It's nice to know that collector geeks' obsessive need to catalogue and collate was well catered to in the days before object-oriented databases came along to erode our free time.

Note that the artist column didn't get much play here; the original owner of this decided to organize by song title.



Finally, a detail from the last page:

Saturday, February 2, 2008

Dog and Pony Show



Copyright 1972. By Rochelle Reed, who doesn't get a byline on the cover or the spine.

The pet ownership history of pop stars, like the Osmonds, Jackson Five etc. At least 50 animal stories within.

I thought the guy on the cover holding the hypnokitty was Rick Springfield, but it's Michael Gray. Yeah, never heard of him either.

Mark Lindsay gets a chapter, the last. But he gets a killer opening line:

"High on a mountaintop in Hollywood, a lonely genius walks his Doberman pinschers into the sunset, the two tall, lean dogs galloping around his heels."

Readability-wise, the book is skimmable at best. The best passage by far:

"Mrs. Jackson was just about to pass the roast beef when she spotted Jermaine's fancy 'bracelet'. Leaning over the table to get a better look at this incredible decoration, she still didn't know it was a snake - until Fred began to move!"