Be patient, it isn't nine o'clock yet

Shortly after the opening credits to the 1965 Disney Films incredi-opus That Darn Cat starring Hayley Mills a bank of newspaper vending machines are shown curbside to a street. The troublesome feline, DC, on a nightly prowl of the town is schmoozing one of the antagonists of the film for food. DC follows the villain which eventually leads the cat into a kidnapper's den and kick-starts the adventure of a meddlesome kid and her pet.

While the vending stands vary slightly in design the common elements of the machines is that the newspapers are not secured and simply rest in an open rack. A slot cut into a box or tube is provided so a customer can insert a coin and then take a paper. My memories of 1965 are a bit hazy from the distance of years but one thing I do recall is that the hippies were everywhere stealing anything not nailed down or bartering for food by spewing plagiarized poetry as they cleaned out a fruit-stand.

Like today, I can't imagine that the honor system of paying for your goods resulted in anything but serious financial losses on the part of the vendor. In my world within a half an hour those racks would be empty and a gum wrapper would be shoved into the money slot. But on Main Street, USA the narcissistic villain being stalked by DC in the movie actually pays for each paper headlining the crime he perpetrated. I guess bank robbery and kidnapping can be a plot point in a Disney film but the studio was reluctant to show an actual crime in progress, no matter how petty. Either that or the villain was playing it cool and behaving so as not to draw attention to himself.

In the film the full vending stand attests that for the most part the unattended machines appear to be successful in practice. But would that honor system work anywhere but in the idealized Disneyverse? For the answer, let's ask Hayley Mills. She knows everything!

That's right, Hayley! In the real world machines and semi-unattended stands, even those inside stores within full view of cashiers and staff are routinely raided and emptied to be hawked by unofficial newsies at intersections and street corners all over the nation. So while art may have imitated life at one point it didn't take long for vendors to wise up and call for securely locking vending machines.

For those into head-knodding, finger-snappin' smooth tunes while waiting your turn to play the bongos at open stage night at the Coffee Bean here are the opening credits to 1965's That Darn Cat as sung by Bobby Darin. It's cool, Jones, cool. At the end of the clip you can see the newspaper stands being used in practice by bad guy Iggy, played by the scene-chewing Frank Gorshin.

By the way...The remake should be burned, the ashes salted and the ashes burned again.

The only thing that would have made the remake watchable is if the bank-robbing kidnappers were the Gecko Brothers.

How To Read Tea Leaves

It is refreshing to see an Archie Comics feature even as old as this one actively discouraging superstitious belief and practices even though they go about it by insulting the reader in a self-aware "We're So Stupid We're Cool" sort of way. This short (probably drawn by Ernie Colon) predates the long period when the Archie cast was used as an arm of the similarly faux-magical Cult of Suffering propaganda division.

From Archie's Mad House #10 (February 1961).

Just a gal

Fantasy versus Reality from Annie Oakley #1 (March 1948) and real life, respectively.

The algorithm needs tweaking

Sometimes those keywords are not that successful in matching the ad to the content.

Or Google Ads has been programmed with a sense of humor.

Your reward is now

It's a miracle!

Love Diary #43 (April-May 1966).

Comic Books vs. Real Life

In Military Comics #25 (January 1944) the leader of the Blackhawks is captured by enemy soldiers and placed in bondage. After knocking out the lone, incompetent guard who was assigned to watch him, Blackhawk frees himself by lighting on fire the wooden stocks keeping him immobile and burning himself free.

Since this is a comic book scene and not real life Blackhawk burns off his fetters, escapes the dungeon and goes on to blow up the Nazi castle or something and punches Mussolini in the face.

But what would really happen if someone really tried to light on fire a wooden stockade in which they are imprisoned in order to escape? I think it would go something like this:

In real life Blackhawk dies horribly in the escape attempt and all his compatriots later die by firing squad. With Blackhawk and his team not around to put a halt to the nefarious plans of the Fifth Column the world collapses under the armored fist of the Japanese Imperial Navy and pretty soon we all have to live in Switzerland and hope we don't get sold back to the Nazis by government officials for profit.

So there you go, kids. don't set yourself on fire.