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L.T. Hanlon

Category: Hermes 3000

The typewriter, not the deity.

The rare gems of YouTube

June 4, 2019June 8, 2019 L.T. HanlonLeave a comment

James Stobie explains it all to you in one of his earliest videos.

This photo of a typewritten document contains the following text. Tuesday, June 4, 2019 Chicago, USA. He caught the westbound. There's a lot of stuff on YouTube that feels more like masturbation than mass communication. Yet amid the flotsam of influencers, conspiracy nuts, and downright idiots are the gems that shine so brightly you anxiously await every new video. One such gem was James Stobie, AKA Stobe the Hobo, who hopped freights across North America and posted videos of his exploits on YouTube. Unlike other trainhopping videos that seemed devoted to the hipster thrill of riding the rails, Stobie’s work came off like something Charles Kuralt might have done. Each video adventure of Stobe the Hobo included commentary about the towns he visited, the nature of life on the rails, and a musical soundtrack featuring Stobie himself on piano. Stobie died in November 2017 under circumstances still not entirely clear. He seems to have either fallen from a bridge or been struck by a train. Much of Stobie’s travels can be viewed on YouTube.

Above, Stobe the Hobo appears in a visually stunning video by RanOutOnARail.

James Stobie Obituary

Secret Society of Internet Hobos — James Stobie Page

Stobe the Hobo YouTube Archive

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Road trips and fine front yards

June 1, 2019June 1, 2019 L.T. Hanlon1 Comment

Dinah Shore wants you and your Chevy to take a road trip.

This photo is of a typewritten page of the following text. Saturday, June 1, 2019. Chicago, USA. Summer always smelled like turf builder. I've always felt that the first of June is the start of summer. Sure, summer begins astronomically on the 21st or 22nd or so. This year the seasons switch at 10:54 a.m. Friday, June 21, here in Chicago. A sure clue that summer had arrived when I was a kid came with the emotionally satisfying odor of Scotts Turf Builder blanketing our neighborhood. Even today I t m given to warm nostalgia when I detect that unmistakable odor. Just what makes that smell? The nitrogen? The phosphorous? The potassium? Who knows. Road trips and vacation also are a sure sign of summer, but our family didn't take many of those. In fact, we took only one: a weeklong summer vacation to the Four Corners area highlighted by a visit to Mesa Verde National Park. When I worked in Wyoming and commuted — I mean spent weekends in Colorado — I enjoyed treating the journey like a road trip. My favorite route took me from the Denver suburb of Wheat Ridge along Interstate 70 and then on past Glenwood Springs (or just before it, depending on your direction of travel) to where I—70 ended and returned to two—lane U.S. 6. I always liked this pre-interstate road; it played a big part in the early scenes of the original Vanishing Point. Interstate 70 is complete through Glenwood Canyon now and it is beautiful but it just isn't the same

 

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When retailers look like jerks

May 29, 2019May 29, 2019 L.T. Hanlon3 Comments

Photo of a typewritten page that contains the following text. Wednesday, May 29, 2019. Chicago, USA. Enough with the mercantile patriotism. I’m glad the holiday weekend is over. I can't begin to tell you how annoyed I get when a retailer declares it will donate X percent of my purchase to (fill in the blank)  This past weekend it was to some Memorial Day—related cause. For crying out, loud, if you really care, don’t place conditions on your philanthropy. If you must, by all means make a public spectacle of your donation, but don't dangle strings. It's in poor taste. Even worse are the retailers whose cashiers are forced to pimp for contributions and won't allow customers to complete a transaction until they select YES or NO on the touchscreen. This always brings up memories of the United Way campaigns at work that required employees to sign and return a form even if they elected not to participate. If the odor of all this smells familiar, it's almost as bad as what's lingering in the opposite armpit: cause—related marketing. To conclude: Lead by example, not by cynically incorporating customer kindness into your fucking marketing plan.

 

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Analog breadfruit comin’ at ya!

May 20, 2019May 20, 2019 L.T. Hanlon1 Comment

Frank Zappa pedals his talent to Steve Allen.

This is a photo of a typewritten page that contains the following text. Monday, May 20, 2019. Chicago, USA. Hermes 3000 (1968). Like breadfruit off the HMS Bounty. The much-overrated but nonetheless witty Frank Zappa said that it isn' t necessary for the world to end in fire or ice — it could just as easily be done in by paperwork or nostalgia. I’m convinced that nostalgia is what fuels most eBay transactions. We finally acquire what we coveted in our youth.	In my case, that's mostly been film cameras and lenses whose prices were hopelessly stratospheric in my teens and 20s. And now that I own a Widelux, an f/ 2.8 Stereo Realist or a near—complete set of Super Takumar lenses with their gloriously yellow radioactive thorium tint, I t m left trying to decide what to do with it all. I've just stumbled into semiretirement and the sad reality has dawned on me that photo equipment is of no use unless you use it. And I 'm not just talking about taking random shots of streets, buildings, power lines, trees, and fields, I 'm talking about people. Unless you' re photographing people, cameras are worthless. I’m by no means a hermit, but these days I’m seldom in situations where people need or want to be photographed. So I 'm going to unload just about all of my analog equipment.	Nostalgia has a way of taking up space, both in closets and in your brain. Note: Unedited. Typos are Easter eggs.

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Typewriters and flying saucers

May 18, 2019May 20, 2019 L.T. Hanlon5 Comments

At least for now, you can watch the TV movie “Roswell” on YouTube. There are excellent performances by Kyle MacLachlan, Dwight Yoakam, and Martin Sheen. The music in this production is incredibly creepy and adds a lot. 

This photo of a typewritten page contains the following text. Saturday, May 18, 2019. Chicago, USA. Hermes 3000 made in 1970. Smith-corona and the thing from another world. Ever since fifth grade I've been fascinated by UFOs. In junior high, my best friend and I even went to a meeting of the Denver UFO Society. And then I became obsessed with cattle mutilations mystery that still not been fully explained to this day. In the 1 980s, the so-called Majestic-12 documents came to my attention. Skeptic that I am, my inclination is these are a hoax.  The papers purport to prove that in the late 1 940s, President Truman authorized the creation of a secret committee to deal with, among other unworldly things, the spacecraft and extraterrestrials allegedly recovered near Roswell, New Mexico. Supposedly, one damning detail that examiners found is that at least one of the documents was typed using a Smith-Corona machine not produced until many years later. According to Curt Sutherly in his UFO mysteries: A Reporter Seeks the Truth (Llewellen Worldwide, 2001) , an expert concluded that the MJ-12 Truman memo was typed with a Smith Corona cartridge machine introduced no earlier than 1963. Clues to determining the typewriter year and model were the capital letters A and W, both of which, (skeptic Phil) Klass, said, tended to. tear the old-style carbon ribbon. This defect was corrected by Smith Corona in the model introduced in 1963. The mystery for me — and perhaps someone more familiar with Smith-Corona product offerings than I am can shed some light here — is that as far as I know, Smith-Corona  didn't introduce its Coronamatic cartridge ribbon system until many years later in 1973. So either the company did make a cartridge typewriter in 1963 or someone made a typo and changed 1973 to 1963. A third explanation, of course, is that the same team investigating the Roswell Incident also worked on the Philadelphia Experiment and a 1973 Smith-Corona Coronamatic typewriter somehow timeslipped back into the late 1940s. Hey! Can you prove it didn’t happen?Note: Unedited. Typos are Easter eggs.

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Stormy weather is portable

May 17, 2019May 17, 2019 L.T. Hanlon4 Comments
Screen capture of MyRadar Pro app shows a map of the Midwestern United States on which icons representing live stormchaser feeds are superimposed.
MyRadar Pro shows video feeds from stormchasers.

This photo is of a typewritten page with the following text. Friday, May 17, 2019. Chicago, USA. Hermes 3000. All the weather — right in your hand. Last night a hundred lightning flashes or more shined through my living room window. And I knew how many of those bolts struck near me, and I knew how long the storm would last. I can also see another storm on its way to— night — and when it will arrive. And out in tornado country I can the stormchasers closing in on deadly weather. And if I really want to, I can watch the live video feeds of mobile meteorologists. I’m able to do all of this on my iPhone, which also lets me compose email, instant messages and even the next bad novel using its QWERTY display. I can switch it to a Dvorak or a QWERTZ display if want. But how am I telling you this? I’m using a manual typewriter manufactured the year before we landed on the Moon. Note: This typecast is unedited. Typos are Easter eggs.

Weather linkage

MyRadar Pro

Live Storm Chasing

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Yes, you can type in hieroglyphs

May 17, 2019May 16, 2019 L.T. HanlonLeave a comment

Photo of typewritten page with the following text. Friday, May 17, 2019. Chicago, USA. Hermes 3000 (1968). King Tut had a typewriter ... well, sort of. Last week, I speculated about whether anybody ever created a hieroglyphic typewriter. Well, it turns out that at least one was made. Such a magnificent machine was crafted by Martin Tytell, a man of many, many talents — one of which included typewriters. According to Typewriter Man, an article by Ian Frazier in the November 1997 issue of The Atlantic magazine, Mr. Tytell did indeed retrofit hieroglyphic typeslugs to a typewriter owned by a Brooklyn Museum curator. That's not the only cool stuff we learn about Mr. Tytell. The man's typewriter expertise leads him to play a vital role in World War Two and beyond. Please read about Mr. Tytell. He led an amazing life and it would make a great movie. Note: This typecast has not been edited. Also: Off to the right side of this photo is an old, public domain sketch of Pharaoh Akhenaten in profile. He has a slender head, aquiline nose and a regal bearing.

Read “Typewriter Man,” Ian Frazier’s story about Martin Tytell.
Read Mr. Tytell’s New York Times obituary.
Learn about Akhenaten, a pharaoh who might have embraced monotheism.

 

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