Belles

Here are interesting items from today’s NY Post, edited by yours truly: From the Weird But True column — An Aussie engineer sued his boss for a million bucks for constantly aiming farts his way. Alas, the court ruled it was just wind… In his financial column, Jonathon Trugman uses a term with which I was previously unfamiliar: Decacorn, defined as tech companies that have a valuation of at least ten billion… According to a study, nearly one in four Americans did not have sex last year. Astonishingly, that was the case for nearly 25% of male 20-somethings. The number of men under 30 not getting any has tripled in the past decade. Analysts speculate that unemployment may be a factor. I wonder if it’s also a by product of the evolution gender roles have undergone. Haven’t men become useless to certain women, and haven’t some males lost their way now that less is expected of them? In my latest novel, Inside-Out, which I began about 1980 and is set in that year, the protagonist, hopelessly in love with a liberated woman, wonders what the social fallout will be. Appropriately, as I was preparing lunch this morning, Gale Garnett’s 1964 hit We’ll Sing in the Sunshine aired on a stream: “Then I’ll be on my way…” Man, was she ahead of the curve in terms of how certain women would view relationships. Here’s a pic of the New Zealand-born Canadian chanteuse from back in the day:

I’ve been watching compilations of historical photographs at youtube. One lovely woman who keeps popping up is Betty Brosmer, of whom I had no recollection despite her abundant feminine charms. Born in California in 1935, she was a popular pin up girl through the ‘50’s. She did a spread for Playboy in which she kept her top on, and was sued by the magazine for breach of contract. According to her profile at Wiki, she said: “I didn’t think it was immoral, but I just didn’t want to cause problems for others … I thought it would embarrass my future husband and my family.” She married champion bodybuilder and magazine publisher Joe Weider in 1961, a union that lasted until his death at 93 in 2013. She was dubbed The First Lady of Fitness. Upon marrying, she ceased being a pin-up girl and concentrated on advertisements that appeared in her husband’s publications. The pair published three books together. The Joe and Betty Weider Museum of Physical Culture is located at the University of Texas at Austin, to which they donated a million bucks. I’m surprised Betty isn’t in any of the ‘50’s monsters flicks, for which she seemed a natural. Although she has no film or TV credits listed at IMDb, her bio states she appeared on several shows, and her posters are in the background of a few movies. The one I like most is splashed with a “do not copy” warning. Here’s another:

And here’s an awesome pic from the same series. Guess the identity of the teenage girl seeking The King’s autograph:

In case you’re stumped — Madonna.

I needed shelter from the light rain in order to run the floating book shop today, so I set up at my usual nook under the scaffold. My thanks to the elderly Latina, who bought yet another thriller, Walter Moseley’s Devil in a Blue Dress, and to the young parents who purchased two sci-fi paperbacks.

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