#all canadian moots are local to me in a way as well...

[theklingerkollection]

how did your grandparents meet? 👀

 Sorry this is years behind the actual ask- my inbox never tells me when I have new messages.  The sets with the funnest stories are weirdly both sets of paternal grandparents, but to me all 4 are pretty funny in their own way.

 My adoptive dad’s parents met during WW2- grandpa was a Canadian farm boy in over his head, grandma was an English ambulance driver who missed the “ladies do not start fights” part of her mom”s lessons. During the aftermath of one of the London bombings, grandpa was on clean up/rescue detail, and accidentally shifted a bunch of debris into grandma’s ambulance path. She wasn’t in a hurry, so she decided to start yelling at him, and he started yelling back. 

 While everyone else just cleaned up, those two continued to screech at each other, with grandpa eventually coming to stand in front of the ambulance to really add some gestures to this fight. Finally, with the debris cleared, she threatened to run his ass over if he didn’t move.  He told her to just try and run his ass over.  She ran his ass over.  A couple days later they ended up in the same bomb shelter, and got forced to get along (aka everyone else just wanted them to shut up for 3 fucking seconds). They ended up exchanging letters until the war ended, and grandma moved to Canada to marry grandpa.  Until her death she maintained she won that argument, and he needed to stop bitching about being run over.

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 (For my moots and frequent flyers on this blog- this is the Grams I talk about in my tags all the time)      My bio dad’s parents are both from rural northern  indigenous communities, and both were the type to just take off for weeks or months with little warning.

 (grams, the second anyone suggests an activity)  During one of their excursions they both (separately) settled down near the same lake. Grams, having arrived first, had a trap line set up (these two are 100+ years old so fur trading was still a big business back then), and during one of her excursions to check the traps, discovered one of the river traps had a very irate, very handsome, and very naked man in it.  My dumbass grandfather got his leg caught while swimming and was, as the youth say, big mad. Grams was nice enough to cut him loose, and when she pulled him out they recognized each other from various cultural events, and started hanging out.  Gramps is still a handsome dumbass, for the record. -------------------------

 My adoptive mum’s dad was an air traffic controller, and because of that had the local weather channel on 24/7 at work (he was in Saskatchewan, it’s so flat you can see weather from 2 years ago, why do you need the weather channel??). My grandma was, of course, the weather girl at the time. Grandpa spent quite a while developing a crush on her, until he finally figured out where they filmed the news, and showed up with flowers. Grams always tells this story with “I mean, it’s a little creepy, but hey, a handsome man with flowers offering me a free dinner? I could stand getting murdered for that. And the cops can tell my dad I died doing what he wanted me to: trying to find a man.”

 Even funnier, not only did she work to piss off her old man (weather girl) instead of finding a man, she was at school, and shortly before she and grandpa got married, she officially became a Professor of Mathematics (which she taught at uni until she retired), and my grandpa was always like “this is my wife PROFESSOR [last name]” just to really annoy everyone.

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 My bio mom’s parents differ in that their marriage was semi-arranged. What makes it funny is that, because of how marriages worked back then (especially in their home country), the whole “obey your husband” thing reeeeaaaally rankled my Nine (grams). She had dreams! Plans! An insanely bitter grandma who told her terrible stories about her marriage! So she went to her parents and was like “I know you want me to get married, and I will...... If you can find me a certain man.”  Now, her parents were pretty well-off, and she was the spoiled baby girl (she has 15 older brothers and her mom wanted girls, so...) so she was indulged these stipulations:  - He must be very handsome, or at least blandly photogenic - He must be smart enough to charm, but not smart enough to get in her way. - He must be either a trust fund kid (like her) with no job, or one with a decorative title, who is not inclined to work (aka the type to want a stay at home wife) - Preference given to hairy men (she loves them hairy bois)

 The lady wanted herself a trophy wife. And oh did she get one. My great-grandpa brought home the son of a business partner: my Dede (gramps). Dede was charming in a “clearly has PR training” kind of way, rarely spoke unless spoken to. Played in a local rugby league as a job, was very handsome and very hairy (he’s the wolfman).  Nine actually straight up told him “I’m looking for an ornamental house husband, because I want to follow my dad into business. Would you sit back and not get in my way? Would you show up for work events looking nice, and do nothing but look handsome for me?”  He straight up calls himself a trophy wife to this day, and she still gets those specialty Persian rug cleaners in to dry clean him before work events (I’m not kidding, he’s hairy)

 I don’t know if anyone else will find these funny, but I always do.

[njadastonearm]

so far my admissions status at the schools I’ve applied to are:

doctoral program at big New England school: no decision (professor hasn’t reached out; probably not getting in)

doctoral program at big Canadian school: no decision (professor hasn’t reached out; probably not getting in)

doctoral program at big northeastern school: rejected from PhD, under consideration for MA

doctoral program at big southwestern school: accepted!

masters program at old, not-quite-Ivy-but-close-to-it school: no decision (professor HAS reached out so I’ve still got a shot but it’s not a sure thing)

masters program at mid-sized local school: accepted!

masters program at mid-sized southern school: no decision (professor HAS reached out and it sounds like I’m almost definitely getting in)

at this point I don’t expect to get into the 1 or 2 and know I didn’t get into 3 (I did what I could; improved my application this year and reached out to professors ahead of time), so even though they rank better than the one I got in that’s okay because I got in somewhere

so of the remaining schools: schools 4 and 5 offer remission and stipend; 6 and 7 can give some funding but not nearly as much. since I’ve been accepted into 4, I don’t think I’ll go to 6 or 7 (I’m still going to meet with the professor at 6; I really liked her during the phone conversation I had with her and am still considering) but if I get into 5, I’m still not sure what I’ll do.

pros of school 4:

I don’t need to apply to another set of schools in a year and a half. I really cannot stress enough how much I do not want to do that.

it’s a completely new location, which is nice because I think I need a change of scenery

I’ve met the people in the lab and think I’d get along with them well (though I’d be the only doctoral student without a scruffy beard)

it’s a program that’s been slowly getting more respected over the years and hopefully will continue to do so while I’m there

the professor I’d work with is one of the biggest authors in my niche interest area

would only spend about five years on doctoral student pay instead of seven.

everyone I spoke to there was super friendly and chill

pros of school 5:

really prestigious school -- I know prestige isn’t everything but it could get me into a better doctoral program where I have better job prospects post graduation. like I get that we’ve been calling prestige into question this week (as we should) but it can still make a difference.

slightly less niche subject area, so I’d have a broader set of experiences that could be more useful later on

more of an apprenticeship model, so I wouldn’t be going into research blind

still far enough away that I’d have to move but close enough not to feel like a totally strange place; plus it’s somewhere I’ve been many times before.

probably wouldn’t need a car to get to campus

of course, all of this is a moot point if I don’t get into school 5. but it’s still something I'm thinking about. I’m still WAY less anxious knowing that I’ve definitely got two to choose from, but hoo boy. this is gonna be tough.

[perfectirishgifts]

The 5 Most Important Retail Events Of 2020 Actually Had Almost Nothing To Do With Covid-19

New Post has been published on https://perfectirishgifts.com/the-5-most-important-retail-events-of-2020-actually-had-almost-nothing-to-do-with-covid-19/

The 5 Most Important Retail Events Of 2020 Actually Had Almost Nothing To Do With Covid-19

IRVINE, CA – OCTOBER 22: Shoppers walk through the produce section at a newly opened Amazon Fresh … [] store on Jamboree Road in Irvine, CA on Thursday, October 22, 2020. Several more stores are planned, including in Fullerton, Whittier, Long Beach and Los Angeles. (Photo by Paul Bersebach/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images)

Oh, what a year — the coronavirus pandemic dominated the headlines in 2020, and rightfully so. However, the year was also punctuated by some important retail milestones that had nothing to do with the pandemic itself, milestones that, when one stops to look at them, say a heck of a lot more about where retail is headed than some upteenth, ad nauseam story about the virus accelerating e-commerce or curbside pickup at darn near every retailer in the country. 

No, and as put forth last year, 2019 was the real tipping point, not 2020. 2020 was just a supercharged, microbial extension of what was a preexisting groundswell. A foundational transformation was already underway, and, while many companies reaped the rewards of shifting their operations towards pandemic-induced changes in shopping behavior, many of these actions would have happened organically over time regardless. 

The real headlines, the headlines that mattered the most in 2020, were far more subtle and substantive. Look closely, and they either confirmed suspicions already out there or hinted at the next brushstrokes on a still-to-be-painted canvas far more than some plexiglass divider on a checklane every will.

Here then, and in order of importance, were the biggest events in retail over the past year, all of which had almost nothing to do with COVID-19:

The department store was shown to have no clothes

There is no sense beating a dead horse on this one, but, if 2020 proved anything, it is that the “why,” as in, “Why come to a physical store to shop?” will always matter.  

Department stores haven’t had a why for some time now. Is it convenience? Is it inspiration? Is it immediate gratification? Touch and feel? Experience?

No. No. No. No. And, no.

It’s none of them. 

Look at the comparative set, and department stores lose across all five dimensions. Consumers are just as easily inspired, if not more so, by Instagram. Delivery can happen whenever people want at the press of a button, rendering immediate gratification and convenience utter moot points, and, while touch and feel and experience are both somewhat still inherent to a physical store shopping experience, the ever-advancing business models surrounding returns and the opportunity costs of just doing something else with one’s time continue to render these aspects less and less important, too. 

As a result, retailers like J.C. Penney and Macy’s M are crumbling right before the industry’s eyes, while, on the flip side, one-stop shops, like Walmart WMT and Target TGT , continue to prove their staying power. Even Sephora’s announcement recently that it plans to open 850 stores inside of existing Kohl’s stores further signals the demise of the department store or, better said, the once great retail horse and buggy.

J.C. Penney’s acquirers like Simon Property Group and Brookfield Property Partners, along with other players like the Authentic Brands Group, should not be confused with knights in shining armor, either. 

Interested parties can try as they might, but there is still no combination of Lucky Brand jeans, Brook Brothers’ suits, etc. inside the four walls of any newly imagined department store that will ever answer the collective “why” any better than what was there before.

Dollar General DG plans to expands its reach 

Long the bastion of Walmart and Target, discount one-stop shopping is a huge business. For years, Dollar General and its roughly 16,000 stores have undercut a certain portion of this business and now the company has plans to extend its reach.

In October the announcement came that Dollar General plans to open a new concept, dubbed “popshelf,” in which it will sell fashionable and on-trend products in seasonal decor and entertaining, along with health and beauty items. 

Popshelf’s stores also won’t be small. They will be 9,000 square feet, with the first two opening near Nashville and another 30 locations planned by the end of 2021. 95% of the items sold within the concept will also reportedly be under $5 and designed to target suburban households earning $50,000 to $125,000. 

Say what, Walmart and Target?

Lest one think Dollar General isn’t as serious as a heart attack about going after the high margin parts of Walmart’s and Target’s businesses, Dollar General on the heels of it popshelf news also confirmed reports of its plans to build a new DGX concept store in 2021 literally six blocks away from Target’s flagship store in Minneapolis. There, too, Dollar General will plan to sell much of what the big guys do, along with fresh fruits and vegetables.

For 2019, NRF reported that Dollar General’s U.S. revenue was just shy of $28 billion, while Walmart’s and Target’s were a combined almost $500 billion. That is quite the delta, and 2020 appears to be the year Dollar General is upping the ante to go right after it.

Instacart and DoorDash started thinking and acting like retailers

As Canadian retail pundit Carl Boutet likes to say, “You may as well replace the “c” with an “m” and just call it Instamart.”

Because that is exactly where things appear to be headed.

While COVID-19 has undoubtedly been a boon to both Instacart and DoorDash, both companies appear to be amassing the troops at the borders of full-fledged retailing. 

Since the beginning of the year, Instacart has rounded out its assortments well beyond grocery. Best Buy BBY , Walmart, Staples, Bed Bath & Beyond BBBY , Sephora, and Costco (for prescription drugs) have all inked new deals with Instacart this year.

If you are keeping score at home, that is pretty much everything in retail. 

Similarly, and taking things one step further by literally co-opting the “M,” DoorDash in August also announced that it had opened DashMart, a self-described “new type of convenience store” that is “owned, operated, and curated” by DoorDash across various cities, and whereby consumers in markets, like Chicago, Minneapolis, etc., can go to an online DashMart storefront and purchase all their most-desired local convenience and restaurant items and then have those items delivered in 30 minutes or less by way of mirco-fulfillment warehouses, run again, by DoorDash.

If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is probably a retailer.

But, that is only one part of the story here. 

Many have long hypothesized a move by one or both of these players into retail. The real moral of the story, however, is what the advancements of Instacart and DoorDash mean for the psychological evolution of one-stop shopping in the years ahead.

If convenience is the barometer by which so many decisions are made and same-day delivery is also such an important part of that mental calculus, then how consumers think about their options and where they go physically and digitally will also start to change. 

Sure, places like Walmart and Target will still exist as the omnichannel manifestations of same-day shopping, but the digital entities like the Instacarts, DoorDashs, and, yes, Amazons AMZN of the world will each or altogether begin to carve out more mindshare as the go-to digital marketplaces for tertiary needs in even more pronounced ways than they do today. 

Over time this evolution will mean that the “me too” (my quotes) retailers, i.e. the speciality players, will continue to lose out, as little by little, in an almost death by a thousand cuts fashion, consumers will have less and less reasons to actually visit their physical stores, a point that becomes especially true when one puts it all into context with the next 2020 bellwether event below. 

Facebook became a retailer  

If the battle of Concord had its “shot heard round the world” in 1775, then Facebook gave retail its own version in 2020.

On November 12, 2020 a seminal moment in retail history occurred when Instagram made its Reels and Shop tabs easily accessible on its homepage. 

The move was momentous because it means that discovery and shopping can now all happen in the same place online. Physical retail stores are no longer pre-requisites for product discovery. In fact, they are now at best poor second choice options because they are all limited by the amount of products retailers can carry inside of their four walls. 

Instagram (and Facebook), in contrast, are not, which means the moments of consumer discovery within the U.S. will now forever be owned by the Zuck, and retailers will be left to scrape and claw over whatever residual social media feed real estate they can secure in much the same way they used to clamor for the prime locations inside of a mall. Only this time, the elements of shipping and convenience will also be added into the equation (see Instacart and DoorDash above), confounding the idea of same-day discovery and delivery even more.

It is crazy how it all ladders together.

Whether one likes Instagram’s changes or not, think of it this way — approximately 4 million people are born in the U.S. every year. Each year, some portion of those 4 million people try Instagram for the first time. And, none of them will ever know “the before” (my quotes). 

To them, Instagram will just be the modern mall from the couch.

Amazon now has grocery stores

“Let me run to the corner Amazon store,” is about to become a real thing. Amazon this year has shown it’s about as hot and heavy for the grocery business as Ross was for Rachel over 10 seasons of Friends.

According to an Amazon spokesperson, Amazon now has in operation:

26 Amazon Go AMZN stores in Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Seattle 

2 Amazon Go Grocery stores in Seattle and Redmond

4 Amazon Fresh Grocery stores in California

Amazon Go stores are generally 1,000 to 3,000 square feet and come with Amazon’s famous “Just Walk Out” computer vision checkout-free technology. Customers just walk in, take whatever they want off the shelves, and walk out. The best way to think about them is as an approximation of your local mini-mart without ever having to stand in line.

Amazon Go Grocery stores are like Amazon Go, only bigger. They are roughly 10,000 square feet and also come with more grocery items and, specifically, fresh produce. They, too, deploy “Just Walk Out” technology throughout the entirety of their shopping experiences.

Amazon Fresh, on the other hand, is slightly different. For one, it’s a full-scale grocery experience, roughly 30,000 to 40,000 square feet, with everything one would expect to find in his or her local grocery store. While it does not deploy “Just Walk Out” technology in the same manner, it does deploy a “Dash Cart,” which allows users of the cart to shop, bag items themselves, and then just walk out without standing in line. 

All three concepts are nearly unparalleled experiences within the U.S. market today, and Amazon, according to a spokesperson for this article, confirmed that it soon plans to roll out out Go Grocery to Washington, D.C. and also to open additional Amazon Fresh stores in Naperville, IL; Whittier, CA; Long Beach, CA; Oak Lawn, IL; Schaumburg, IL; Bloomingdale, IL; and Woodland Park, NJ between now and the end of 2021. 

So, effectively, Amazon will have a full-scale grocery store in three states inside of one year.

Barring one Giant Eagle pilot implementation at a convenience store just outside of Pittsburgh, not a single major U.S. retailer has even attempted a computer vision-based checkout-free experiment live and on the scale of any of the store concepts just described above.

All of which means Amazon, as of now, has a 30 store head start on the rest of the grocery industry in terms of redefining in-store convenience and the use of AI within retail. 

This advantage may not seem like all that much now, but give it a few years and, state by state, Amazon could be the new standard bearer for physical grocery convenience, with unbeatable prices to boot — because, come to think of it, why should Prime Day only be an online phenomenon, when real-time, marked-to-market electronic shelf labels can pull off the exact same trick in-store? 

If Facebook was the shot heard round the world, then Amazon may as well be the redcoated British army. Because Amazon is coming for grocery and its nearly $1.0 trillion prize.

And, in this coming period of U.S. retail history, there may not be anything the rest of industry can do to stop it.

From Retail in Perfectirishgifts

[kbaldwin0609]

‘The Bachelor’ Episode 8 Recap: Impossible Decisions

Warning: This recap contains spoilers for Episode 7 of The Bachelor.

“I might be going home tonight, too.” Corinne’s words — uttered at the end of last week’s “shocking” episode in which Nick randomly showed up at the women’s hotel and send Kristina home — gave us all a little hope. But then tonight, this happened:

Raven gets a rose! Vanessa gets a rose! Corinne gets a rose! Vanessa gets a rose! Everybody gets a rose! Hometown dates all around!

Up first: Hoxie, Arkansas, home of Raven and about 2,700 other people. Am I the only one who got a little nervous watching Raven take Nick for a ride on that ATV? (Those damn things almost killed Jamie Lynn Spears’ daughter!) But the only danger Raven and Nick encounter is a local policeman, who just happens to drive up as they’re climbing the steps to the roof of a grain bin. And whaddya know — it’s Raven’s big brother, Officer Weston!

After a spirited bout of “mudding” on ATVs, Raven and Nick do some “off-roading.”

Yikes, is that a leech on Nick’s torso? God, I hate nature. Anyhow, after the swamp make out session, the duo get cleaned up and head home to meet Raven’s family. And what a happy homecoming it is — as Raven learns that her dad, Wesley, has been declared cancer-free. Naturally, Raven is overcome with emotion. “I’m really thankful for you two,” she tearfully tells her parents, and soon everyone is hugging and crying. And honestly, if you didn’t tear up a little when Wesley told his daughter “I’m glad it will be me who walks you down the aisle” — well, then I applaud your titanium heart.

After that sweet moment, Raven sits down with her mom, Tracy, to talk about Nick — how she thought he was going to be “arrogant,” but seeing him with his family back in Waukesha changed her perception of him. Mom says she trusts her little girl’s judgment — and then she presses a little too hard as to whether Raven feels ready to say, “I love you.” (“She has not been putting her heart out there,” explains mama in her confessional.)

Meanwhile, Nick and Wesley are chatting out on the porch — and the Bachelor gets right down to business, asking if Dad will be “comfortable” with it if Raven ends up engaged to Nick. “I’ll be real frank,” replies Wesley. “Don’t take this wrong, but I didn’t expect to like you. I don’t know why, but I didn’t.” (Oh dude, you know why, you’re just too polite to say it.) Still, Wesley declares Nick “a very likable guy,” and says he has plenty of faith in Raven’s decision-making skills. “I just don’t want no surprises!” he adds with a laugh. “Even after this is over.” Nick gives his word — even though it’s a promise he can’t possibly keep. (Just ask Jason Mesnick.)

Raven feels so encouraged by the visit, she decides to tell Nick she loves him — but only gets as far as telling Nick “something really special could come out of us” before she chickens out. “I couldn’t do it,” she admits. “I don’t like to show my weakness at all… Now I’m just worried that I may be the only that hasn’t said that I’m in love with him.”

We’ll have to put a pin in this discussion, honey, because it’s time for us to head to Dallas, where we’ll meet Rachel’s family (for the first time this year). First up, time to rid Brother Viall of his demons.

“I know my church will be a new experience for him,” notes Rachel. “So I am a little nervous. Is he going to be comfortable being in a predominantly black church?”

Sure! Especially when everyone gives him such a warm welcome. The pastor even takes the time to introduce Nick to the congregation, adding, “Rachel is very important to us, man, so we hope you take very good care of her.” Does “Dumping her on TV so she can turn around and star in The Bachelorette” count as taking good care of her? If so, then Nick’s your man.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. This date may have been rendered moot by Team Bachelor‘s announcement last week, but I’m glad it happened if for no other reason than it featured a white Bachelor saying this to a black woman on national television:

I’m not color blind. I know you’re black. But the reason I gave you the first impression rose was because of how easy we connected, my attraction to you physically, that you were just a very beautiful, impressive woman.

And let all of God’s children say Amen.

Now for the bummer: Rachel’s dad, the very imposing-sounding federal judge, will not be at home when Nick arrives due to “work obligations.” Still, he and Rachel are nervous as they make their way to the front door. “Nick has never seriously dated a black girl. I’ve never seriously dated a white guy, and I’ve never brought one home,” says Rachel. Someone in her family obviously has, though.

Yes, that gentleman on the far right is Alex, husband to Rachel’s older sister Constance. Also on the welcoming committee: Rachel’s mom Cathy, her cousin Andrea, her nephew Allister, and her younger sister Heather. And now, for the sound bite of the night:

Yes, the teasing comes early and often at the Lindsay family dinner table. Little sister Heather kicks things off by asking Nick if he can identify all the food on his plate. “I’m not from Mars,” he shoots back, mock offended, before properly naming all the food — including okra.

Things get a little weird when Constance’s husband refers to Nick as “a white,” which he follows up with, “Is this the first black woman that you’ve dated?” I suppose it’s not an inappropriate question, given Nick’s televised history and the general absurdity of competitive dating… but still, something about Alex just seems a little off to me.

I suppose that’s neither here nor there. Constance, meanwhile, has some real concerns about how being in an interracial relationship might affect her little sister. “Right now with this climate that we’re in, I feel like you’ve seen more racism come out,” she says. “So [Nick] does need to be aware… You have to know how you’re going to navigate that path in a relationship.”

Rachel’s no-nonsense mom Cathy is having those same concerns, but she listens politely to Nick’s “I like her for the woman that she is — she just happens to be black” speech. Rather than prompting Nick to explain why he’s good enough for her daughter, Cathy asks him if he sees any “red flags” with Rachel — which is a clever way for mom to suss out any potential issues with the relationship without putting the Bachelor on the defensive. Either way, Nick gives a diplomatic answer, saying he has no pressing concerns but admitting that he knows Rachel is of course “not perfect.”

Mom seems satisfied enough, and she gives the Bachelor a surprisingly strong endorsement once they’re alone. “I like what I see with Nick,” she tells Rachel. “So far he seems comfortable around us. What attracted me to your dad was he knew who he was, where he was going… And that’s what I see in Nick.” Rachel is “blown away” by this endorsement.

Clearly her mother is not one who hands out approbation willy-nilly. Awww man — even though I think Rachel’s going to be a great Bachelorette, after seeing this hometown date, I’m even more disappointed that these two crazy kids don’t make it.

In keeping with the “things that are disappointing” theme, let’s head down to Miami, where Corinne informs Nick that he’s going to spend the day… watching her shop?

“Corinne is on a first-name basis with everyone here,” marvels Nick. “Every time Corinne walks into a store, it’s like Christmas morning to the people who are working in the store.” He seems more bemused than anything, and even indulges Corinne in a Pretty Woman-style dressing room fashion show. But when she charges over three thousand dollars of merch on her card, it’s almost too much for the simple Midwestern boy to handle.

And it’s only gonna get worse, because before Corinne takes Nick home, she brings him to a crowded café to declare her love. He responds the only way he can — by shutting her up with a kiss — and then it’s off to meet the woman of the hour: Raquel!

Also on the scene: Corinne’s mom Peri, her sister Taylor, and her dad Jim. After the olive course, Corinne and her dad head off to her room for a chat — and Jim simply can’t believe that Corinne already dropped the l-bomb on Nick.

“We’ve been dating for a month and a half!” protests Corinne. Yeah Dad — that’s, like, a lifetime in reality TV terms. As for Nick, producers must have realized that Bachelor Nation would revolt if we didn’t see him get grilled by Raquel.

Though Nick doesn’t actually provide a real answer to that question (beyond “Corinne is amazing”), Raquel seems satisfied. “If she’s happy, I’m happy,” she says of her charge. Things won’t be so easy with Dad, though: He wants to know what Nick actually does for a living. After people stop paying him to get dumped on TV, how, exactly, will Nick provide Corinne with the lifestyle to which she’s become accustomed? “I’m okay with being the breadwinner,” retorts Corinne, who nonetheless disputes the idea that Nick will have to be the “stay-at-home mom” in the relationship. (Don’t worry, pop — Nick told me during our Facebook Live chat that he’s launching a men’s grooming business. That’s almost like a job! Everything will be fine.)

As Jim and Nick bond over some 15-year-old Scotch, Peri tries to remind Corinne that her current situation is a “fantasy” and she should guard and protect her heart accordingly. “I’m in love with Nick,” counters her daughter. “And if he chooses any of the other three girls, I’m going to be heartbroken.” Heartbroken… or on a plane to Paradise. One of the two.

Our last pit stop of the week is in the chic city of Montreal, in the Canadian province of Quebec. (Did I just do a quick Internet search to make sure Quebec was a “province,” and not a “city” or “territory” or whatever? Perhaps.) Anyhow, Vanessa greets Nick in a park and then takes him immediately to meet her students — all of whom are thrilled to see their teacher again.

Oh for god’s sake, the date hasn’t even started yet and already I’m crying. After the introductions, Nick, Vanessa and her students make a scrapbook of Vanessa’s Bachelor “journey.” It doesn’t seem like a very educational activity, per se, it reunites the students with their beloved teacher — and that’s clearly all that matters to them.

I hate when this show makes me feel things! When it’s time to meet Vanessa’s family, she explains to Nick that he’ll be doing two family visits — one to her mom’s side and one to her dad’s — since her parents are divorced. Up first is mama Mary and approximately 19 other people, including this little rock star.

One of Vanessa’s friends jumps right in with the question that’s on everyone’s mind: If Vanessa “wins,” will she have to leave Canada. “We’ve talked about it briefly,” says Nick, a little embarrassed. “We haven’t talked about that quite yet. I love Montreal though.” Hearing this, her Aunt Catherine is disappointed and a little surprised. “I think I expected more,” she explains. “I wanted to know, like, ‘What’s your plan?’… I think there needs to be some more hard questions.”

Mom agrees, so she pulls Nick aside to press him on why he likes Vanessa — and sorry, pal, but saying she’s hot isn’t enough. We don’t get to see Nick’s answer, though, because Team Bachelor cuts right to Nick’s talk with Vanessa’s self-described “big, overprotective sister” Melissa. She, too, is understandably shocked that Nick and Vanessa have only “touched on” the rather significant question of which country they would live in should they get married. “I’m just really scared for her,” says Melissa, as her eyes fill with tears.

Oh for God’s sake, Nick — what are you crying about? Get it together, man. Of course, this whole hometown visit is pretty emotional for everyone. Vanessa’s brother Patrick chokes up as he tells his sister, “Honestly, in my heart, you’re like the greatest person in my life, and you deserve an amazing person.”

Wait, how am I just noticing now that Vanessa is wearing black leather (pleather?) pants with zippers?? That’s… interesting.

But I digress. Melissa is further dismayed to learn that Vanessa doesn’t even know what Nick wants to do with his life after filming ends. “My sister is always a step ahead. She always likes to think things through. And I don’t think she’s thinking like that now,” sighs Melissa. Mom tells Vanessa that she’s sure Nick is a “fine young gentleman,” but she doesn’t seem convinced that he’ll be able to make her happy.

Man, that was a little rough. And there’s still one more family to visit! Night has fallen by the time Nick and Vanessa arrive at her dad’s. Team Bachelor doesn’t even bother to tell us his name — or the name of the woman he’s with — I guess because it’s already been a long day and we’re never going to see these people again anyway. Nick, just ask for Nameless Father’s blessing, okay? After six full seconds of silence, the Bachelor gets his answer.

“You have three other women, you went to their home — did you ask their blessing also?” asks Papa. And Nick doesn’t do himself any favors with his weird, dishonest answer (“In a way, I ran it by them”). “It’s yes or no,” counters père, and the Bachelor is finally forced to admit that yes, he did ask three other dads for their blessing. And that’s when things get really uncomfortable.

Dad: “So you’re telling me you want to get engaged to my daughter.” Nick: “Um…” Dad: “You’re asking for my blessing. What does that mean?”

Eventually Nick gets it together enough to assure Papa that even though he and Vanessa are in a “unique and weird situation,” he would not ask her to get married unless he truly believes it’s right. “We want the exact same thing,” he adds. Ultimately, Dad — who has a name, it turns out: Pat — reluctantly gives Nick his blessing. “He sounded honest,” he concludes. Perhaps a little too honest: When Vanessa learns that Nick also asked Corinne, Raven, and Rachel’s dads for their blessing, her disappointment is palpable.

“It makes it less meaningful,” sighs Vanessa. Gurl, what show do you think you’re on? None of it is meaningful!

The next day, Nick is enjoying the view from a hotel balcony in Brooklyn, and he preps emotionally for the rose ceremony. “It almost feels impossible to make a decision tonight,” he muses. Perhaps this will help:

What in the holy hell is Corinne wearing? Nick, this is not the woman you want dressing you for the rest of your life.

By the time the sun sets on Brooklyn, there are only about five minutes left in the episode, so you know we’re about to be handed some “To Be Continued” action. And wouldn’t you know it, just before the credits roll, Nick gets an unexpected knock at the door.

Oh FFS. Really, Team Bachelor? No one cares. No one. But we’ll have to wait until next week to find out how little we care about what Andi Dorfman has to say to her ex. For now, I want to hear from you about tonight’s episode. Was Vanessa’s family too hard on Nick — or not hard enough? Do we really believe Raquel gets to eat with the family every night or was that just for the cameras? And which family was your favorite? Post your thoughts now! And be sure to check out Chris Harrison’s exclusive blog right here. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go order some Italian take-out. That Sunday lunch looked delicious.

The Bachelor airs Mondays at 8 p.m. on ABC. Watch clips and full episodes of The Bachelor for free on Yahoo View.

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I CAME LATE TO Raymond Chandler, and I don’t know if it was in the best or worst possible way. I had my degree in literature, and I had read not a single word by Chandler. It was a rainy afternoon in London and I needed to kill a couple of hours, so I went to see a showing of The Big Sleep. The film I saw, however, wasn’t the 1946 Bogart-Bacall classic (which I’d only heard about), it was the 1978 remake directed by Michael Winner and set improbably, unconvincingly, in England. The film is universally despised. Roger Ebert said it “feels kind of embalmed,” although plot-wise it’s strangely faithful to the novel, and the cast is fantastic — Jimmy Stewart, Candy Clark, Richard Boone, Oliver Reed, with Robert Mitchum as Philip Marlowe. Mitchum has always seemed to me the perfect Marlowe, and far more believably tough and insolent than Humphrey Bogart; I just wish he’d played the part 20 years earlier. He first played Marlowe in 1975 in Farewell, My Lovely, when he was in his late 50s; he was 60 by the time he made The Big Sleep, and he doesn’t look a youthful 60.

You could argue that if Chandler’s genius could shine through that dreadful adaptation, then it’s pretty much unassailable. And shine through it did. I was hooked, and went back to the source. I immediately read The Big Sleep (1939), his first novel, and then the rest of the oeuvre, and I’ve been increasingly hooked ever since. I consider myself an enthusiast rather than an expert or a scholar, although there’s a shelf in my office heavy with Chandler-related volumes: the letters, the biographies, the notebooks, and various Los Angeles–related items that include Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles (1987), Chandlertown: The Los Angeles of Philip Marlowe (1983), and Tailing Philip Marlowe: Three Tours of Los Angeles — Based on the Work of Raymond Chandler (2003). The Annotated Big Sleep, with a short but excellent foreword by Jonathan Lethem, will eventually join them.

But here’s the question: when I read The Big Sleep for the first time (or subsequently, for that matter), was there much in there that I didn’t understand? And I’m not talking about plot matters such as who killed the chauffeur, or why the cute but borderline-insane murderess isn’t prosecuted, but rather matters of fact and vocabulary.

Did I feel the need to reach for the dictionary and look up “swell” when Marlowe says to Vivian Sternwood, “I don’t mind your showing me your legs. They’re very swell legs”? Did I wonder what a jerkin was, or a chiseller, or a bookplate? Was I puzzled by the terms “hot toddy” and “got the wind up”? Did the words parquetry, stucco, or croupier seem unfamiliar? After I’d read that General Sternwood was propped up in “a huge canopied bed like the one Henry the Eighth died in,” did I feel the urge to check the date of Henry VIII’s death?

Honestly, I did not — but Owen Hill, Pamela Jackson, and Anthony Dean Rizzuto, the three editors of The Annotated Big Sleep, certainly think that all those things I’ve listed are worthy of explanation, which, I think, raises the question of who reads The Big Sleep and who those annotators think reads The Big Sleep.

Pico Iyer, in his essay “The Mystery of Influence” (2002), says of Marlowe, “Of all the great figures of the twentieth century, he seems one of the most durable, in part because he travels so well and so widely.” And he tells us that Haruki Murakami began his career by translating Chandler into kanji and katakana scripts. It’s not hard to imagine that Japanese readers might find something of the noble, tarnished samurai in Marlowe, though what they make of a line like, “She has to blow and she’s shatting on her uppers. She figures the peeper can get her some dough,” is anybody’s guess. Somehow they cope.

¤

The fact is, it’s rare, if ever, that we read a book and understand every single word, every literary allusion, every local or historical reference, just as we don’t understand every single thing we encounter as we go about our lives. And, of course, with fiction it gets harder depending on the age of the work and our cultural distance from its milieu. In a piece on John Updike’s Rabbit Is Rich (1981), Martin Amis writes, “Like its predecessors, the novel is crammed with allusive topicalities; in a few years’ time it will probably read like a Ben Jonson comedy.” I imagine there may be readers of that essay who could use a little annotation explaining the nature of Ben Jonson’s comedies.

If the common reader happily misses a few references, we tend to take it for granted that the best literary works will require explanations, glosses, and readers’ guides. Many have read James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) with a map of Dublin, Ireland, and a copy of Ulysses Annotated: Notes for James Joyce’s Ulysses (1988, by Don Gifford with Robert J. Seidman) close at hand. Joyce would have been delighted.

Steven C. Weisenburger’s A Gravity’s Rainbow Companion: Sources and Contexts for Pynchon’s Novel (1988) is a great help in understanding much abstruse material in Thomas Pynchon’s 1973 masterwork; although, when I laid hands on the compendium (a good decade after I’d first read the novel), I was thrilled to find that he’d got various things wrong, including not knowing the English meaning of “minge.” And this is one of the joys of annotated volumes: seeing what the editors did and didn’t explain.

And it doesn’t stop at high literature. There’s a subgenre of annotation that seeks not to explain evident difficulties, but to show the complications in apparently uncomplicated texts. Martin Gardner is the boss here. Having annotated Lewis Carroll’s Alice volumes (and declared Carroll to be sexually “innocent”), he went on to annotate books by G. K. Chesterton, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798), and Ernest Thayer’s “Casey at the Bat: A Ballad of the Republic — Sung in the Year 1888” (1888). His publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, runs a list of annotated volumes that includes The Annotated Little Women (2015), The Annotated Peter Pan (2011), and The Annotated Wizard of Oz (2000). Do these works need annotation? The question is moot, since there’s clearly a market and an audience; and if we’ve learned anything in the last several decades, it’s that scholarship can be applied to popular, or even low, culture, just as successfully as it can be applied to high art.

¤

Raymond Chandler would have understood the dichotomy and might have reveled in the contradictions as they applied to his own work. In writing for a pulp audience, he knew he was slumming, inhabiting the less respected and less examined districts of the city of words. But he was not modest about his talents or his ambitions. He’d had an English classical education at London’s Dulwich College, which contained Marlowe House. He knew that his hero’s name might evoke Christopher Marlowe for some readers, but certainly not for all. The earliest version of Chandler’s detective is named Mallory, as in Thomas Malory, the author of Le Morte d’Arthur (1485), but maybe he came to think that was going too far.

In a 1949 letter to Hardwick Moseley, Chandler wrote, “The aim is not essentially different from the aim of Greek tragedy, but we are dealing with a public that is only semi-literate and we have to make an art of a language they can understand.” His invocation of Grecian heights strikes me as going way too far.

¤

No doubt the “semi-literate” public will not be rushing to read The Annotated Big Sleep, but for the rest of us, there’s a huge amount to enjoy in the book. I found myself more intrigued by the background information than by the editors’ close reading of the text, which sometimes feels like they’re breathing over your shoulder and making arch remarks, telling you how to read (for example, “Carmen is back to her default between the kitten and the tiger — for now”), but no doubt some readers will feel the opposite way.

Some of this background comes into the “who’d have thought it?” category. For instance, we’re told that in the 1930s, Los Angeles had 300 casinos and over 40 newspapers; hard to say which of those numbers is more surprising. Information about the city’s population and ethnic makeup is fascinating. I don’t think many of us regard 1930s Hollywood as the center of Jewish life in Los Angeles. The book quotes the journalist Garet Garrett (not his birth name), who visited the city in 1930 and wrote,

you have to begin with the singular fact that in a population of a million and a quarter, every other person you see has been there less than five years. More than nine out of every ten you see have been there less than fifteen years.

In 1939, the Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Progress Administration authored a book titled California: A Guide to the Golden State. In it, they called Los Angeles the “fifth largest Mexican city in the world” (a distinction that nowadays belongs to Chicago). We also learn that between 1920 and 1930, 30,000 Filipinos migrated to California. They were known as dandies and sharp dressers, which explains Marlowe’s line to Carmen Sternwood that she’s “[c]ute as a Filipino on Saturday night.” I guess this is a racial slur, but as these things go it seems quite gentle.

There are some revelations relating to Marlowe himself — details that are easy to miss or simply skim over. For instance, Marlowe’s description of himself on the novel’s first page, “I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it,” is army slang — “neat, clean, shaved and sober” means ready for inspection. Later, in a description of Marlowe’s apartment, we read he has “an advertising calendar showing the Quints rolling around on a sky-blue floor, in pink dresses.” I had never thought to wonder who the “Quints” were, but we’re told these are the Dionne quintuplets, identical French-Canadian girls born in 1934, the first quintuplets to survive past infancy. A couple of them are still alive, if Wikipedia is to be believed.

There’s also an interesting consideration of Marlowe’s daily rate — $25 plus expenses, which some clients find a bit pricey. It’s the equivalent of $400 in today’s money, which sounds a tidy sum, although considering what Marlowe has to go through to earn his money, it’s not altogether unreasonable.

The annotations make much of the geographical and topographical background to the novel, describing Laurel Canyon, the Pacific Coast Highway, Franklin Avenue, and noting landmarks such as the Sunset Towers and Bullocks on Wilshire. But as becomes obvious to anyone who’s tried to walk in Marlowe’s footsteps (something I did when I first started living in Los Angeles), one of Chandler’s skills was to blend a detailed real city with one of his own invention. So yes, being told that Geiger’s bookshop is on Hollywood Boulevard by the corner of Las Palmas seems utterly precise, but Stanley Rose, who had a bookstore at more or less that location, isn’t much of a model for Geiger: you’d find Rose hanging out in his store talking with Hollywood literati rather than taking nude photographs of drugged heiresses. At other times, Chandler simply made up the names of streets; Laverne Terrace and Alta Brea, for example, sound completely authentic, but you won’t find them on any map.

The editors, inevitably, and reasonably enough, wade into the inscrutable and contested sexuality of Chandler and Marlowe. I’ve never been sure whether Marlowe’s homophobia (as Chandler wouldn’t have called it) was his own, or Chandler’s, or simply something that pulp readers would have expected from a tough guy detective. It’s well known that quite a few people who met Chandler assumed he was gay, but that raises more questions than it answers, and there’s certainly no evidence that he ever had any sexual relationships with men. Still, the annotations are interesting in themselves. They tell us that the “1920s and early ’30s saw no fewer than ten new terms for ‘homosexual’ recorded,” including “queer.” We also learn that, as a result of prohibition, gay and lesbian subcultures had become more accepted in select quarters, while still remaining hidden. Once you were breaking the law by drinking illegally in clubs and speakeasies, you were less likely to cut up rough about seeing some same sex couple and a drag act or two.

The editors also raise the possibility that when Vivian Sternwood, wearing a “mannish shirt and tie,” says to Marlowe, “I was beginning to think perhaps you worked in bed, like Marcel Proust,” she may be accusing him of being gay. I don’t quite buy that, but then, I don’t have to.

I do buy, eagerly, the book’s analysis of the instances where Chandler “cannibalized” his own early stories and incorporated them in the novel. They show, despite Clive James’s insistence to the contrary, that Chandler’s writing improved very rapidly indeed in the six years between the publication of his first short story, “Blackmailers Don’t Shoot” (1933), and The Big Sleep (1939).

The book is illustrated with dozens of images, book and magazine covers, movie stills, maps, period photographs. These are well chosen and very useful. I wish some of them were bigger, especially the maps, and I wish some of those pulp covers were in color, but you can’t have everything.

For what it’s worth, I only found one error, maybe half an error. The book has Le Corbusier as sole designer of the chaise longue basculante: these days Charlotte Perriand is usually given her due as co-designer.

The book’s bibliography is lengthy without being exhibitionistic, and the editors have even managed to track down a treatise on “the lost art of walking,” by one Geoff Nicholson, that contains a short section about Chandler. Top-notch sleuthing. Marlowe would be proud.

¤

Geoff Nicholson is a contributing editor to the Los Angeles Review of Books. His latest novel, The Miranda, is out now.

The post “Marlowe Would Be Proud”: On “The Annotated Big Sleep” appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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