Yester-day I received an old Haldeman-Julius catalogue that contains a picture of David Oliver Cauldwell. He looked like some cross between a stereotypical Marine and Beaker.

The mail to-day brought four tickets from Television Preview:

You have been selected to participate in a survey whose findings will directly influence what you see on television in the future.

The thing is written to make it seem that the audience will be evaluating a show or shows (and my gut reäction was to be appalled that any of us in SoCal should be asked, it being bad enough that the thinking in Los Angeles has such a disproportionate and otherwise perverse effect). But I did a quick check on the WWWeb, and what I've learned is that the audience will really be used to test commercials, and otherwise be surveyed for their reäctions to consumer products. The shows presented will be old-and-probably-failed pilots or series.

I stopped at La Vache for lunch, and ate too much food. I entered planning to eat a salmon sandwich, and found carrot soup on the menu. I ordered a bowl (rather than a cup), and this in itself was a good choice; but I should then have forgone the sandwich (and its side of mashed potatoes), in spite of the anti-depressant virtues of salmon. I am now parked at David's Coffee Place, attempting to remain relatively inert.

Speaking — well, writing — of David's Coffee Place, my understanding is that the new owners are going to change the name to Babycakes. I think that this new name is a generally bad idea. First, David's Coffee Place (AKA just David's Place) is something of a neighborhood institution — a well-regarded institution — and a wholesale name-change will make people feel as if that institution is gone. Second, I see the particular name Babycakes as the sort of thing associated with something at best briefly fashionable.

Someone in my apartment complex reports his or her lap-top computer having been stolen from his or her apartment.  They ask that we be alert to someone who seems inappropriately to have an lap-top computer.  Since there are cameræ at all of the entrances and exits, the strong suggestion is that is was stolen by or with the complicity of one of the other residents. I have been used to feeling that I could leave my door unlocked when making a quick trip out, and otherwise feeling that my things needn't be locked away in my apartment. I regret the change.

On a sidewalk along Washington Street this morning, I spotted a belly-ring sans the little screw-ball that would keep it attached to the big screw-ball. I imagined it falling free from someone's navel, though it might instead have escaped a pocket or hand-bag.

As I was passing Club San Diego on Fourth Avenue, the sounds of men giggling were escaping through an open door. I resisted the urge to cry Christ is risen! into the tiled entrance-way. There would have been a good chance of a reply asking just what part of Him had risen.

I breakfasted at the San Tropez Bistro on Fifth Avenue. Now I am parked in David's Coffee Place, until I feel that I must go home and get some sleep.

Last night, at David's Coffee Place, a large, odd fellow came and sat near the pianist. He began aggressively coaxing the pianist to play this-or-that in particular manners, paused in doing this to talk loudly for a while over his cell phone (it perhaps did not occur to him that the he could step outside for a while, and that the rest of us might not want to hear his part of the conversation), and then returned to the dominating of the pianist. The large fellow did put some money in the pianist’s tip jar. But his manner was still odd and very pushy. I tentatively mapped-out how to forcibly intervene if things got clearly out-of-hand.

After the fellow left, the pianist noted that the interaction had been difficult. I noted that I'd been wondering whether I might have to bail-in, but hadn't seen real signals of impending violence. I suggested that the pianist work-out a signal that regulars would recognize as a call for assistance. He tried to think of an appropriate tune. Since he plays a lot of show-tunes — yeah, it’s Hillcrest — and indeed songs from West Side Story, I suggested Jet Song. He liked that.

I don't know whether he understands that I would, indeed, bail-in.

As I left David's Coffee Place to-night, there was a group of men out front, hugging and talking. Across the street, a drunk yelled impotently at them that they were disrespecting the male gender. At the time, I was amused enough that I laughed aloud for a while.

But it does irk me that many people think that they are entitled to invoke respect as a justification for oppression.