Tuesday, August 20, 2019

Back in the Saddle

The days during and following the annual OBFT interlude tend to be sparse here from both a content perspective and the quality of thought on offer. I aim to make no particular improvement in the latter, though I suppose this is definitive evidence of the former.

I understand that my man TR is in need of some balm for his injured self, and so I offer this obituary headline from today's Washington Post:

Ralph Whittington, erotica collector extraordinaire, dies at 74


This could be an exercise in prurience, but in actual fact, Mr. Whittington was a serious archivist of things pornographic. Employed by the Library of Congress for his entire professional career, Whittington cataloged such things as telephone books at work ("I was in charge of every phone book in the freaking world.") and developed a collection of more than 5,000 recordings of blues and doo-wop music in his spare time.

But porn was his passion, curatorially speaking. In a 2002 article in the Post, he explained his collection: “I have bawdy house coins from whorehouses in the 1860s,” he told gettingit.com. “One coin says, ‘10 cents for lookie, 25 cents for feelie, 50 cents for doie.’ I have one film from 1913 called ‘Free Ride,’ which is supposed to be [the] oldest film they’ve found in the U.S.”

He had a copy of the first commercial sex videotape sold to the general public, a version of “Deep Throat” playable only on an obsolete Betamax machine. Mr. Whittington had a Betamax player, of course, but one piece of equipment he never owned was a computer. As a result, his expertise remained rooted in the era before magazines and videotapes gave way to the Internet."

Whittington sold most of his collection in 1999 to the Museum of Sex, but retained a few items that appealed to his sense of history. And while he had the collection, he had an amusing attitude towards the views of others, saying, “When people come here, at least I don’t bore them,” he said. “They may leave shaking their heads, but they’re not bored.”

Get to work, TR. I've found something that'll keep your mind off the pain.

18 comments:

  1. Is prurience derived from pruritus? Or maybe one derives pruritus from prurience? Klam was ahead of his time with his Betamax porn collection.

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  2. Who can forget Klam's Betamax Smut Lounge, located in Unit M Room 206?

    I tried to post a letter from OBFT on Saturday to the comments, but it got lost in the ether and I didn't have the fortitude to do it again.

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  3. He was single, right?

    My wife can barely tolerate my massive baseball card collection, which I recently unboxed and started displaying in my home office/man cave. Can’t see how she’d roll with a world-class erotica collection to boot.

    My interest in baseball cards and pro wrestling waned as my interest in girls and boobies grew in the late 1980’s, but it was an obsession for several years. I found one specific folder dedicated to “hot phenoms” from 1987 to 1989. It is laughable. It features Mike Greenwell, Ramon Martinez, Hensley Meulens, Todd Zeile, Pete Incaviglia, Ruben Sierra, Roberto Kelly and others of the same ilk. Oy veh.

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  4. Too bad you lost your world-class collection of vintage Swedish erotica.

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  5. he lived with his mom, tr. after he divorced a real actual lady, with whom he procreated. bit of an upset, that.

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  6. Oh. Thanks. That’s not weird at all.

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  7. a dude named matt brooks is the executive director of the republican jewish coalition. he's a friend of very good friends of ours, and i've met him a couple of times. he's not having a great week. and based on some of the shit coming from the rjc's twitter, he probably doesn't deserve to.

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  8. Is that as robust an organization as W&M’s Jewish Student Club? Poor Dr J would get cold-called every year by them.

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  9. Happy 18th anniversary to Nickelback’s “How You Remind Me.”

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  10. Had I been more culturally aware, that could have been played at my wedding instead of the weird stuff we chose.

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  11. The 30 for 30 podcast series “The Sterling Affairs” is amazing. All five episodes total a little less than four hours. Ramona Shelburne is the shit.

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  12. The Orioles have set the record for most home runs allowed in a season. It’s August 21

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  13. The OBX radio Wind Report was just delivered by some dweeb from Kitty Hawk Kites who called himself Luke Skywalker.

    A. There are two people with that name that you aren’t as cool as, dude.

    B. Man, this place already misses Bruce “Dream” Weaver.

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  14. Did Bruce do radio wind reports under that handle? I'd like to hear that. I certainly missed him on the OBX this year.

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  15. He did. I think the name was applied to him rather than of his own doing.

    Just leaving the Outer Banks now after seven glorious days. I stopped off for lunch at our old familiar joint. Six times in seven days I visited that wonderful establishment. You could make a case that I would do as well or better to diversify my culinary intake, but I think you’d have a hard time convincing me.

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  16. Tortuga's Lie is always a solid choice. I've been craving fish bites all week.

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