Anchovy Industries

Anchovy Industries once again will send a representative to WESTEC, the premiere manufacturing and machine tool trade show held annually at the Los Angeles Convention Center. For the last several years I’ve been taking a day off work to attend this show. That’s how I use my vacation time. That’s what I do for fun. That’s what I’ll be doing Wednesday, April 2, 2008.

"Could you stake a fellow American to a meal?"

[I wrote this a long time ago and meant to post it earlier, but I got cold feet. Please take the obvious metaphor with a grain of salt; no disrespect intended.]



“Hey mister, could you stake a fellow American to a meal?” This is Bogart’s line as he plays the expatriate bum Fred C. Dobbs "Dobbsie" in Treasure of the Sierra Madre. He inadvertently hits up the same guy a few times because he never looks at the guy’s face when begging for change; he merely recognizes the fine clothes for what they are—his next meal ticket. It's similar for us romantic bums. We rarely get to chomp down on a juicy steak (or stake, as Dobbsie would have it), but we sure recognize the fine duds from whence them steaks can be had!

I was walking along the train platform today thinking about someone I had as much right thinking about as a bum does thinking about a steak. So I popped the last of my breakfast banana into my mouth and staunched at least that particular appetite. And it was with that mouth full of mush that I spotted the girl way down on the other end of the platform—a real Lauren Bacall, an Ingrid Bergman, a…. Well, not really, but maybe my mouth wasn’t the only thing full of mush that morning. She looked in my direction and gave me the look. Yes, that one. Wow, those doe eyes were enough to get this romantic bum hallucinating about a nice thick porterhouse with garlic mashed potatoes and all the trimmings.

And then it happened. Someone else ran off with the steak. The boyfriend came up from behind me and her gaze diverged, slightly at first so I could still delude myself into thinking she was looking at me and then more rapidly with every step closer the boyfriend took.

You see, if you watch the movie you’ll find out what comes next after Bogart hits up the guy for a meal. The man disregards Dobbs, turns away, moves on and tosses his half-smoked cigarette butt into the street. Dobbs pauses, stares at it and considers his pride. Then Dobbs loses the butt to a street urchin who beats him to it. The youngster, without any hesitation, picks it up off the ground and struts away defiantly puffing smoke.

Poor Harvey

Fox has reported on a study of 82 couples that found that “couples where the wife is more attractive, both partners tended to be very content [and vise versa].” This would seem to bode well for us average looking guys, but that’s not the end of the story. (Though it is the end of the news story, demonstrating one of many problems I have with the way lay media reports scientific stories. I’m surprised I haven’t already written about this.) Notice that the study says nothing about whether women are likely to select partners based on what makes for a content relationship. It may well be that they nonetheless selectively favor the Adonis to the Harvey despite the fact Harvey would make for a happier home. In fact, there are studies that demonstrate women choose tall guys over short--a factor hardly related to a happy home life. It seems Harvey’s doubly screwed if he’s short!

And once again we see that in a world full of lonely folks many happy relationships go unrealized because we place too much stock in what our eyes see.