What’s your prism?

 

Mark Alexander’s daily round-up of Internet pictures had this image:

Aside from the joke, does this make you think of anything else? Depends if you’re interested in vehicles, desert plants, the various shades of green, highway signage. For me it’s typefaces.

At first I thought this might be a photoshop, but if so, it’s a better job than most – including the one on the company’s website. The font on the back matches the font on the side of the tank, and few random meme dudes would worry about that.

It’s Windsor, aka the “Woody Allen Typeface.” He’s used it for the credits of his movies since the 70s. It’s an odd choice for a septic firm, but it’s not wrong; it lends a self-deprecating note of style and elegance, like an aristocrat sniffing a perfumed hanky to stave off the BO of the rest of the court.

Initially I thought it might be one of Nick’s Fonts, as he had a series of Windsor-adjacent fonts with names relating to the Wizard of Oz. Nick Curtis is a matchless fontagrapher who’s translated hundreds of 20th century typefaces into digital form, reviving the work of  countless anonymous letterers whose work defined the look of their times. I remember sitting in the theater, years ago, watching the opening credits of the rebooted Oz movie, and realizing that they’d used many of his fonts. I knew those fonts; they were like friends, or at least pen-pals. I wrote him and asked if he’d seen the movie, whether he’d gotten a nice fat Disney check. Nope. They just bought them for ten bucks a throw.

Anyway. The septic-tank picture reminded me that I often see the world through the prism of typefaces, as well as signage and architecture – those are my primary overlays. They’re utterly different from an engineer or a fireman or a grocer or a cop or a woodworker or a house painter. Everyone has their own prism.

What’s yours?

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  1. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    No, but who cares what Pat Hingle, Bruce Dern, or that DeNiro feller look like naked?

    • #31
  2. Django Member
    Django
    @Django

    Not my prism, but I’ve found it to be true on many occasions.

    • #32
  3. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Django (View Comment):

    Not my prism, but I’ve found it to be true on many occasions.

    Like, It is better to be Pleasantly Surprised, rather than Unpleasantly Surprised?

    • #33
  4. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Judge Mental (View Comment):

    Percival (View Comment):

    kedavis (View Comment):

    “Big Bad Mama” with Angie Dickinson is better. For a few reasons…

    Big Bad Mama doesn’t have Pat Hingle, Bruce Dern, or that DeNiro feller in it does it? Does it???

    It has Shatner. And his butt.

    That could have been a stunt butt. You don’t know.

    • #34
  5. Judge Mental Member
    Judge Mental
    @JudgeMental

    Percival (View Comment):

    Judge Mental (View Comment):

    Percival (View Comment):

    kedavis (View Comment):

    “Big Bad Mama” with Angie Dickinson is better. For a few reasons…

    Big Bad Mama doesn’t have Pat Hingle, Bruce Dern, or that DeNiro feller in it does it? Does it???

    It has Shatner. And his butt.

    That could have been a stunt butt. You don’t know.

    Unfortunately you do.  You wish there was a stunt butt.

    • #35
  6. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Judge Mental (View Comment):

    Percival (View Comment):

    Judge Mental (View Comment):

    Percival (View Comment):

    kedavis (View Comment):

    “Big Bad Mama” with Angie Dickinson is better. For a few reasons…

    Big Bad Mama doesn’t have Pat Hingle, Bruce Dern, or that DeNiro feller in it does it? Does it???

    It has Shatner. And his butt.

    That could have been a stunt butt. You don’t know.

    Unfortunately you do. You wish there was a stunt butt.

    I have no interest in Bill Shatner’s butt, stunt or not.

    • #36
  7. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Angie Dickinson’s butt is much more interesting, as are those of Robbie Lee and Susan Sennett.

    • #37
  8. Judge Mental Member
    Judge Mental
    @JudgeMental

    Some things you can’t un-see.

    • #38
  9. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    I obsess over places the way James Lileks obsesses over fonts.

    For example, when I saw the Kingman Septic Service truck, the first thing I did was to figure out where the business was located, and then snooped around with Google Satellite View and Streetview to get an idea of the layout and physical environment.  (It seems there is a trailer park next door and just upwind of the business address. It reminded me that when we were first married Mrs R and I lived in a trailer park that was often downwind of the city sewage treatment plant.)

    If you tell me a story on Ricochet, such as the one about your grandfather flying his plane under the Fort Snelling Bridge, it’s off to Google Maps to learn more about the area and refresh my memory on how it relates to familiar family places in the Twin Cities area.

    When Valerie of the Different Russia YouTube channel drives around her city near Moscow, I head to StreetView to get some more looks at those places and see how they all connect.  

    When a young man from Russia rode his bicycle from Moscow to Vladivostok last summer (no mask, no rest days, no hotels) I sometimes stopped his YouTube videos to see if I could find the exact spots on StreetView and have a look around. Sometimes a roadsign from his videos would give me sufficient clues to find the exact spot.

    I’ve always been interested in such things from long before YouTube.  In 1995, minor league baseball came to Battle Creek (Midwest League, Class A). One of the announcers would sometimes talk about the sights seen from the announcers booth, so I decided I wanted to see those places, and the next year did a three-week bicycle tour to all the ballparks in the league. 

    In between games, I visited some sites Alan Eckert had written about in his book about the Black Hawk war.  (It’s lightly fictionalized history, but I’ll save my rant about that for another time, as I did one on Ricochet just yesterday.)  The good thing, though, was that Eckert liked to tell exactly where events had taken place, in terms of modern streets and highways.  So I had to go see some of those places, and have been doing that sort of thing ever since.

    I’m not the only person who likes to see the places where stories took place. Some people have made a more complete tour of the Laura Ingalls Wilder places than we did with out children.   But I tend to do it all the time, and now with Google Maps I can indulge in virtual visits and pre-visits. 

    I don’t remember now if it was the gravesite of Chrissy the Skunk Woman that led me to a family story, or if the family story led me to Chrissy the Skunk Woman. It was mostly a hard-luck story from the days in the 20th century before I was born. But I was motivated to get on my bicycle and ride to some of the places in the story, and was able to send photos of some of the places to an elderly descendant of that family who was no longer able to get around to visit those places for herself.  

    I could go on and on, but writing about it tends to take away from the time spent researching and visiting these sites.

    • #39
  10. Roderic Coolidge
    Roderic
    @rhfabian

    Django (View Comment):

    When things don’t make sense to you, look for the hidden assumption. That is the one you made that seems so obvious you never thought to question it. Sometimes that assumption is wrong.

    Indeed.  When I’m shown that one of my assumptions is wrong it’s like an epiphany.  These days I’m having so many epiphanies that I can’t be sure of anything.  One example would be my assumption that when people are shown the facts they will do the right thing.  Boy, was that ever naïve.

    • #40
  11. Douglas Pratt Coolidge
    Douglas Pratt
    @DouglasPratt

    I share your font preoccupation, @jameslileks. When I was 12 my aunt gave me a toy printing press that used rubber movable type. By the time I hit high school I had two presses, one of them treadle-operated, and had a lively little business printing business cards, wedding invitations, handbills and invoices for the local grocery store, just about anything you could do with lead type. This was the late Sixties so there were still a couple of businesses that would sell you fonts sufficient to fill out a California Job Case. I learned all I could about different type faces (“When in doubt, use Caslon!”) and their histories. It truly is fascinating stuff.

    I can still read upside down and backwards, an essential skill when setting type by hand. And I won a trivia contest just a few weeks ago by knowing what a pica is.

    • #41
  12. Miffed White Male Member
    Miffed White Male
    @MiffedWhiteMale

    Douglas Pratt (View Comment):

    I share your font preoccupation, @ jameslileks. When I was 12 my aunt gave me a toy printing press that used rubber movable type. By the time I hit high school I had two presses, one of them treadle-operated, and had a lively little business printing business cards, wedding invitations, handbills and invoices for the local grocery store, just about anything you could do with lead type. This was the late Sixties so there were still a couple of businesses that would sell you fonts sufficient to fill out a California Job Case. I learned all I could about different type faces (“When in doubt, use Caslon!”) and their histories. It truly is fascinating stuff.

    I can still read upside down and backwards, an essential skill when setting type by hand. And I won a trivia contest just a few weeks ago by knowing what a pica is.

    Little mouse-like creature that lives at high altitude in the Rocky Mountains, right?

    • #42
  13. Douglas Pratt Coolidge
    Douglas Pratt
    @DouglasPratt

    Miffed White Male (View Comment):

    Douglas Pratt (View Comment):

    I share your font preoccupation, @ jameslileks. When I was 12 my aunt gave me a toy printing press that used rubber movable type. By the time I hit high school I had two presses, one of them treadle-operated, and had a lively little business printing business cards, wedding invitations, handbills and invoices for the local grocery store, just about anything you could do with lead type. This was the late Sixties so there were still a couple of businesses that would sell you fonts sufficient to fill out a California Job Case. I learned all I could about different type faces (“When in doubt, use Caslon!”) and their histories. It truly is fascinating stuff.

    I can still read upside down and backwards, an essential skill when setting type by hand. And I won a trivia contest just a few weeks ago by knowing what a pica is.

    Little mouse-like creature that lives at high altitude in the Rocky Mountains, right?

    Uh, maybe? I was thinking of the printer’s measurement. A pica is 1/6 of an inch.

    • #43
  14. Miffed White Male Member
    Miffed White Male
    @MiffedWhiteMale

    Douglas Pratt (View Comment):

    Miffed White Male (View Comment):

    Douglas Pratt (View Comment):

    I share your font preoccupation, @ jameslileks. When I was 12 my aunt gave me a toy printing press that used rubber movable type. By the time I hit high school I had two presses, one of them treadle-operated, and had a lively little business printing business cards, wedding invitations, handbills and invoices for the local grocery store, just about anything you could do with lead type. This was the late Sixties so there were still a couple of businesses that would sell you fonts sufficient to fill out a California Job Case. I learned all I could about different type faces (“When in doubt, use Caslon!”) and their histories. It truly is fascinating stuff.

    I can still read upside down and backwards, an essential skill when setting type by hand. And I won a trivia contest just a few weeks ago by knowing what a pica is.

    Little mouse-like creature that lives at high altitude in the Rocky Mountains, right?

    Uh, maybe? I was thinking of the printer’s measurement. A pica is 1/6 of an inch.

    I was joking…

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pika

    • #44
  15. Henry Racette Member
    Henry Racette
    @HenryRacette

    Douglas Pratt (View Comment):

    Miffed White Male (View Comment):

    Douglas Pratt (View Comment):

    I share your font preoccupation, @ jameslileks. When I was 12 my aunt gave me a toy printing press that used rubber movable type. By the time I hit high school I had two presses, one of them treadle-operated, and had a lively little business printing business cards, wedding invitations, handbills and invoices for the local grocery store, just about anything you could do with lead type. This was the late Sixties so there were still a couple of businesses that would sell you fonts sufficient to fill out a California Job Case. I learned all I could about different type faces (“When in doubt, use Caslon!”) and their histories. It truly is fascinating stuff.

    I can still read upside down and backwards, an essential skill when setting type by hand. And I won a trivia contest just a few weeks ago by knowing what a pica is.

    Little mouse-like creature that lives at high altitude in the Rocky Mountains, right?

    Uh, maybe? I was thinking of the printer’s measurement. A pica is 1/6 of an inch.

    Funny, I met both picas and pikas when living in Colorado: the former when I started writing automation software for the publishing industry, the latter while hiking in the Rockies.

    • #45
  16. Judge Mental Member
    Judge Mental
    @JudgeMental

    Miffed White Male (View Comment):

    Douglas Pratt (View Comment):

    Miffed White Male (View Comment):

    Douglas Pratt (View Comment):

    I share your font preoccupation, @ jameslileks. When I was 12 my aunt gave me a toy printing press that used rubber movable type. By the time I hit high school I had two presses, one of them treadle-operated, and had a lively little business printing business cards, wedding invitations, handbills and invoices for the local grocery store, just about anything you could do with lead type. This was the late Sixties so there were still a couple of businesses that would sell you fonts sufficient to fill out a California Job Case. I learned all I could about different type faces (“When in doubt, use Caslon!”) and their histories. It truly is fascinating stuff.

    I can still read upside down and backwards, an essential skill when setting type by hand. And I won a trivia contest just a few weeks ago by knowing what a pica is.

    Little mouse-like creature that lives at high altitude in the Rocky Mountains, right?

    Uh, maybe? I was thinking of the printer’s measurement. A pica is 1/6 of an inch.

    I was joking…

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pika

    I thought it was ten characters per inch on a typewriter, opposed to the twelve character per inch Elite.

    • #46
  17. Douglas Pratt Coolidge
    Douglas Pratt
    @DouglasPratt

    Henry Racette (View Comment):

    Douglas Pratt (View Comment):

    Miffed White Male (View Comment):

    Douglas Pratt (View Comment):

    I share your font preoccupation, @ jameslileks. When I was 12 my aunt gave me a toy printing press that used rubber movable type. By the time I hit high school I had two presses, one of them treadle-operated, and had a lively little business printing business cards, wedding invitations, handbills and invoices for the local grocery store, just about anything you could do with lead type. This was the late Sixties so there were still a couple of businesses that would sell you fonts sufficient to fill out a California Job Case. I learned all I could about different type faces (“When in doubt, use Caslon!”) and their histories. It truly is fascinating stuff.

    I can still read upside down and backwards, an essential skill when setting type by hand. And I won a trivia contest just a few weeks ago by knowing what a pica is.

    Little mouse-like creature that lives at high altitude in the Rocky Mountains, right?

    Uh, maybe? I was thinking of the printer’s measurement. A pica is 1/6 of an inch.

    Funny, I met both picas and pikas when living in Colorado: the former when I started writing automation software for the publishing industry, the latter while hiking in the Rockies.

    Now I’ve got pika-pica-pika-pica-pika-pica running through my head… I guess I’ve finally lost it.

    • #47
  18. JosePluma, Local Man of Mystery Coolidge
    JosePluma, Local Man of Mystery
    @JosePluma

    Trash. I pay a lot of attention to what people throw away, how they do it, and what it means.  

    • #48
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