Basket of Kisses

Since we were discussing “I would get her so pregnant,” I know Basketcases will be interested in Ben Zimmer’s Mad Men Word Watch column, in which he discussed four potential anachronisms from The Rejected.

Joey’s making a lascivious joke at Trudy’s expense, obviously, with “get her pregnant” intended to have an earthier reading. The so adds emphasis to the joke, a type of emphasis that I don’t think would have been available before the shift in so that began in the ’80s.

If you want to see the other three phrases discussed, read the whole thing.

Don and Lane see a Japanese monster movie. The obvious thought is that it’s Godzilla vs. the Thing, which came out in 1964. Since it was easy to see old movies in New York City in 1964, it could also be an earlier film.

However, a number of experts on Japanese monster movies insist it’s Gamera (1965), a clear anachronism.

What we need to resolve this is clear screenshots, preferably side-by-side comparison. If anyone has that information, we’d be happy to publish it.

Tom & Lorenzo caught it.

That lamp on Roger’s desk was designed in 1967 1964.

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Details, details, details. “Mad Men” is full of them. Ignore them at your peril; blink an eye and you’ll surely have missed something.

We’ve done quite a lot of looking at Don’s “big picture” this week, so I thought it would be fun to focus on something “small” in this post; namely, Don’s hat. He’s still wearing one. In 1964.

Why should this matter? In my opinion it does, because ever since I read a fabulous book years ago when I was in college, The Secret Language of Clothes, I’ve come to believe clothes do indeed carry a hidden code.
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While watching Public Relations, I noticed that Don was watching football during a day/time that football wasn’t on in those days. But then I shrugged it off. Me? Have accurate knowledge of football? Pshaw!

Then I got an email from a Basketcase named Nat, saying the same thing. Don watched football at night, and football wasn’t on at night in 1964.

Soon it was all over the Internet (and I felt a little foolish for not having posted).

Now, the LA Times has answered this burning question:

It’s not that the producers didn’t know there wasn’t a night football game for Don to be watching. It’s that they couldn’t get the rights to the hockey game they wanted Don to be watching. Sunday’s episode took place on Saturday, Nov. 28, 1964. That night, the New York Rangers beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 4-1.

Unfortunately, “Mad Men” was unable to secure any rights for audio or video of that game. The producers wanted some background noise from the television and instead went with audio of a football game. The audio was not supposed to be discernible, but obsessed viewers (like this one) could pick up the play-by-play of a football game.

Well, that’s a relief.

The Times “On Language” columnist Ben Zimmer sent me two follow-up articles, which I think you’ll find as interesting as I do.

First, on Visual Thesaurus, the specifics on words mentioned but not explored in the Times article. I think it comes to satisfying conclusions on most, but I believe it leaves “very good place” kind of dangling. And I’ve yet to see Midnight Lace, which purportedly uses “so” the same way Joan does.

Second, from Language Log, a column on the Times bowlderizing the ‘Mad Men’-ese column; disallowing shithead—a word which will appear in Season 4. (I’m going to make an executive decision that telling you this is not a spoiler.) I’d have put money down that was too modern for Mad Men, but I was wrong.

The New York Times’ On Language column this week is “On ‘Mad Men’-ese.” It’s a lovely column, discussing anachronisms and “un-achronisms” on our beloved show, but I confess my favorite paragraph is:

Very often, however, fans will discern anachronisms that aren’t there — “un-achronisms,” as they were dubbed in the online forum Television Without Pity. Deborah Lipp, who runs the “Mad Men” fan blog Basket of Kisses with her sister Roberta, has dispelled fans’ concerns about the appearance of words like intense, lifestyle, self-worth, regroup and recon. She credits the hard work of the “Mad Men” brain trust with making sure that the true clunkers are few and far between.

I totally apologize for loving anachronisms as much as I do. They just tickle me. Here’s some tickling:

Anachronism on the bookshelf

In this still from Mad Men’s tenth episode of season three, look at the book above Betty Draper’s right shoulder: it’s a compendium of the first three novels of W.E.B. Griffin’s “The Corps” series, “Semper Fi,” “Call to Arms,” and “Counterattack.” The books were published in 1986, 1987, and 1990 respectively.

Look, the moment when Carlton asks Don who he’s dressed as is beautiful. I get it. Symbolism. Woo. But it’s a total anachronism. Parents didn’t take kids as old as Sally and Bobby trick-or-treating in 1963. That’s very modern, that’s what you call “helicopter parenting.”

Believe me, as late as 1971, when I was 10 and Roberta was 6 (more or less the same ages as Sally and Bobby), I was taking her trick-or-treating without parental supervision. I was going door-to-door selling Girl Scout cookies at that age. All by myself. A very protective parent might say “stay on the block” in those days. Or not. But accompany the kids? Are you kidding?

AMCtv.com

There are so few, and this one has been around for so long!

We just converted an old friend of ours, and she’s watching Season 1. She writes to us that in Ladies Room, someone refers to the “military industrial complex.” That phrase was rather famously coined by Eisenhower in his farewell speech in 1961.

Any experts who can confirm or deny? Was the phrase in vernacular use before the speech?