With the exception of the mid-eighteenth century, 1920s/30s America is definitely my favorite slice of space-time. Sinclair Lewis novels, H.L. Mencken articles, Clarence Darrow trials, Buster Keaton films, Robert Goddard rocket launches, Tesla on the cover of Time magazine, Gene Austin ballads... good stuff all.

Most of all, though, it's the way they talked that keeps me coming back. Listen to Jolson talking to his mother in The Jazz Singer or Cagney punching three hundred words of dialogue into thirty seconds of Footlight Parade or some Lewis character rhapsodizing about The Motorcar... none of it makes any damn sense, but it's infused with this totally irresponsible, shallow, We'll Screw Tonight And Drink Ourselves To Death In the Morning vitality that shines forth from between the corn pone nineteenth century and the metal lunch box fifties as Something To Remark.

Gary Abernathy is my tip of the tophat to all of that.

- DvL

The Count is correct. If we didn't hold our love of the early thirties in check, every comic would be about sly hucksters and flappers spitting staccato nonsense at each other in an art deco speakeasy. Fortunately, we only indulge ourselves on occasion.