Laugh-In magazine headline, 1968

Let’s be honest, when I’m at a party I love when someone gets rip-roarin’ drunk and makes a crazy fool of himself. Usually that person is me, and I’m wearing the lampshade. I can’t say I recall any of the most embarrassing moments, although I did have a taxi go through a Jack in the Box drive thru at 2 in the morning.

I also love when type gets drunk and wonky. I’m not talking about type that is a tiny bit “wacky”. I like the stuff that is out of control all over the place. The 1950s and 60s were a haven for drunk type. I imagine, based on Mad Men, that the designers were smashed at work, so the type followed. Today, there is less crazed drinking at work (most days). This results in stand-up sober, polite typography. Which is fine when it’s at a meeting of neurologists or CEOs, but let’s agree that type should be let out to have a groovy time once in a while.

Magazine page, 1968

Sprite packaging, 1950s

Pillow Talk titles, 1959

John Hubley, Director, Film title, 1966

John Severson, The Angry Sea, 1963

New York World's Fair banner, 1964

Lost in Space opening titles, 1968

Paul Rand, Apparel Arts, 1939

50 Guitars Visit Hawaii, 1962

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That Girl paperback novel

There is a rumor that people in Los Angeles don’t read. But, I’ve heard that Los Angeles is one of the biggest book markets in the world. That sounds impressive, as if we were all reading Also sprach Zarathustra in the original German by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche. The reality probably includes this and enormous amounts of Jackie Collins novels. I found another alternative. Paperback books that are written for the truly intellectual. People who have read everything, and I mean everything are desperate for new content. A book adaptation of a 22-minute Adam 12 episode fills this need. Yes, it is possible to fill 224 pages with the spine-tingling plot of “Three hundred pounds of drunken driver menaces a quiet pedestrian street.”

Once you know all there is to know and are close to omniscience, or oneness with the universe, you need the novel That Girl. But stop, it’s not just Marlo Thomas running around town with a flippy hair-do. In this iteration, That Girl is Cathy from Wuthering Heights, “wandering the moors for eternity in search of her lost love, Heathcliff.” If Emily Brontë had the option to rewrite Cathy’s character as a perky young woman splitting her time between Heathcliff and auditions she would. ”Oh, Donald, I have lost the faculty of enjoying their destruction, and I am too idle to destroy for nothing.”

The gripping plot, That Girl paperback

Adam 12, The Runaway, paperback

additional sub-plots

TV69, not innuendo

Wild Wild West, and this needs no comment

Laugh-In, episode 12, the book adaptation

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