New York office workers, interviewed by NBC outside 30 Rockefeller Plaza on November 22, 1963, one hour after JFK’s death.
via peterfeld
November 22, 2009
Lyndon Johnson is sworn in as president by Judge Sarah Hughes aboard Air Force One, Nov. 22, 1963.
via - peterfeld
November 19, 2009
November 18, 2009
Welcome, Sterling Cooper
Well, look at this little past meets present! McCann Erickson, the big bad wolf that bought up Sterling Cooper in the season finale (and screwed over Betts on her big Coca Cola ad!), has put up a video on their main site that cheekily excerpts all the McCann references in “Shut the Door, Have a Seat”.
The video will be up for a week or “until Matthew Weiner yells at us for doing it,” as per a McCann exec in this article.
Of course, they thought they’d be sneaky enough to get the last “there will be diamonds on the doorknobs” line past us, but! not so fast! that line is from season 2, re: the Putnam Powell and Lowe merger.
• footnote - by Natasha Simons
November 17, 2009
Pete Campbell shows his upstart tendencies early on in season one when he takes that supremely German woman’s research out of Don’s trash to try to impress the Lucky Strike executives. Not surprisingly, the research is uber-Freudian in nature, discussing the controversial “death wish” theory.
Freud posited that, after World War One, people’s desire to live was counterbalanced by a sublimated aggressive streak, known colloquially as the death instinct. This instinct stemmed from a form of masochism, a wish to destroy the corporeal body.
Our German lady thinks maybe this can hoity-toity up the Lucky Strike advertising! Don disagrees, because — well because you try to peddle some of that European fancy talk on a farm hand like Don and you know he is NOT IMPRESSED. Pete, on the other hand, is looking forward to an age of counter-intuitive advertising (and relying a little bit on machismo), and applies the research to smoking; if they can’t say smoking is healthy anymore, maybe they should embrace the risks. Maybe a real man would like to destroy his lungs from the inside out! Or something. The idea is definitely raw, and the Lees of Lucky Strike pretty much decide Pete’s a little crazy for even suggesting it.
Although Lee Jr. knows a little something about self-destructive urges, no?
• footnote - by Natasha Simons
November 16, 2009
Can you guess what Boho lover lady put on for her afternoon romp with Don?
Of course you can.
It is the crowning jewel of a masterpiece: Blue in Green. It’s the third track on Miles Davis’ 1959 Kind of Blue. The composition was co-written by Bill Evans who played piano on the album. Evans was to the piano, what Davis was to the trumpet. Both men begun with a bop beat and then slinked into a cooler, looser, slow-like-honey mode with the rising influence of West Coast jazz at the the beginning of the 1960’s. Davis, of course, went on to wilder orchestrations and built a discography defined by musical innovation.
Evans found his steady rhythm in cool jazz. In the mid-sixties he was a part of the breezey California sound along with tenor sax titan Stan Getz. The two did album together which is also very good to listen to when committing adultery in the Village. Or anywhere.
From the dog-eared copy of that naughty book floating around Sterling Cooper:
And softly, with that marvelous swoon-like caress of his hand in pure soft desire, softly he stroked the silky white slope of her lions, down, down between her soft warm buttocks, coming near and nearer to the very quick of her. And she felt him like a flame of desire, yet tender, and she felt herself melting in the flame. She let herself go into it. She yielded with a quiver that was like death, she went all open to him.
