The Newsstand Sophisticate

AT&T is discontinuing its free over-the-phone time service in California and Nevada on Sept. 19. When I was growing up near San Francisco I made a point of setting my watch a great deal more often than was strictly necessary by dialing POP-CORN and listening to—according to this L.A. Times article—the voice of Joanne Daniels. (This was before the days of the World Wide Web, or, in my house at least, the days of VCRs and cable television, so dialing POP-CORN was about the only “high-tech” I had access to.) I also found it somewhat hypnotic to listen to this voice do nothing but tell the time for as long as you wanted to listen. I think I imagined her recording it all in one sitting.

So if you grew up in Northern California, you only have 19 days left to hear Joanne Daniels’s dulcet tones before “the man” silences her: (415) POP-CORN.

In the new Vanity Fair, Christopher Hitchens recounts his experiences touring the U.S. to promote his book, God Is Not Great. It’s an amusing article, and there’s an especially good paragraph on Austin’s own Marvin Olasky, the man who invented the term “compassionate conservativism.” Olasky apparently claimed that the Americans won the Revolutionary War because George Washington enforced Christian morality among the troops:

Olasky’s book on presidential morality (which sadly was written before this president took office) says that George Washington won the Revolutionary War because he forbade drinking and swearing in the ranks of his army, whereas the British forces were awash in immorality. I argue that the war was won largely by the French, who were not strangers to wine or oaths, and that the American troops at Valley Forge were much inspired by Thomas Paine, who may not have cursed all that much but who never left the brandy bottle alone and who thought that Christianity was a joke. Moreover, the Brits—indicted by Olasky for their indulgence in adultery and even buggery—did manage to hold on to Canada, India, much of the Caribbean, and much of Africa in spite of divine disapproval. “God on Our Side” is one of the oldest and weakest arguments in human history.

Tony Wilson, founder of Factory Records, has died. I never knew much about Wilson when I was a teenager buying and listening avidly to any record with the Factory label, but since then I’ve come to appreciate what he did very much. Entrepreneurial talent and great taste are an unfortunately rare combination, but they were certainly combined in Wilson. I can’t think of another record label in which graphic design, production, and music are so perfectly put together, and which have aged so well. (Well, maybe Happy Mondays haven’t aged well, but the early Factory releases have.)

R.I.P, Tony.