.png)
Make two dos, say? / TUE 3-4-25 / Green-and-white sidekick of video games / Start of many souvenir slogans / Feature of a cockatoo / Fast-food pork sandwich with its own locator website
Tuesday, March 4, 2025
Constructor: Hanh Huynh
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
THEME: "I'M SHOOK" (65A: "This news has got me rattled!" ... or a hint to 1-, 20-, 37- and 54-Across) — things you shake:
Theme answers:
- POMPOMS (1A: Cheerleaders' accessories)
- SPRAY PAINT (20A: Graffiti artist's supply)
- POLAROID PICTURE (37A: It develops in front of your eyes)
- TAMBOURINE (54A: Hand-held instrument that jingles)
Guns N' Roses is an American hard rock band formed in Los Angeles, California, in 1985, as the result of a merger between local bands L.A. Guns and Hollywood Rose. When they signed to Geffen Records in 1986, the band's "classic" line-up consisted of vocalist Axl Rose, lead guitarist Slash, rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin, bassist Duff McKagan, and drummer Steven Adler. The current line-up consists of Rose, Slash, McKagan, guitarist Richard Fortus, drummer Frank Ferrer, and keyboardists Dizzy Reed and Melissa Reese.Guns N' Roses heavily toured the West Coast club circuit during their early years. Their debut album Appetite for Destruction (1987), supported by the eponymous tour, failed to gain traction, debuting at number 182 on the Billboard 200, until a year after its release when a grassroots campaign for the "Welcome to the Jungle" music video brought the band mainstream popularity. "Welcome to the Jungle" and "Paradise City" both became top 10 singles, with "Sweet Child o' Mine" becoming the band's only single to reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100. The album has sold approximately 30 million copies worldwide, including 18 million units in the United States, making it the country's best-selling debut album and eleventh-best-selling album. With their stylistic mix of punk rock, blues rock and heavy metal, the band helped move mainstream rock away from the glam metal era of the mid-late 1980s. In addition, they are credited with revitalizing power ballads in rock.
• • •
The grid *is* weirdly built, though. When the theme answers run Across (i.e. most of the time), you don't usually see long Across answers that *aren't* themers. It creates a kind of visual confusion. And here we've got not two but four Across answers of 8+-letter length (that is, standard themer length) that have nothing to do with the theme—that are, in fact, longer than two of the themers themselves (POMPOMS and the revealer). Usually, with Across-answer themes (i.e. most themes), you get your longer non-theme answers in the Downs. Today, no long Downs at all. Nothing over six letters. All this architectural weirdness must've snowballed from the placement of POMPOMS. If you put it at 1-Across (to match "I'M SHOOK!" at the bottom right), then it has to sit on two answers of at least seven letters in length. For every answer you put on the edge of the grid, there have to be at least two more adjacent answers of equal length moving inward, because any black squares in there would create one- or two-letter answers in the crosses, and those are not allowed. So I’M COMING CARESSING TRANSLATE EGOMANIA end up running with the flow of themers rather than perpendicular to that flow (as would be typical for longer answers in a conventional themed puzzle). If the puzzle seemed a little odd, structurally, well, now you know why (if you didn't already).
Three slightly stumpery parts for me today. One, I already covered (TRANSLATE!). The first such answer was the first Down I looked at: 1D: Draft selections (PICKS). I had the "P" from POMPOMS and could not think of a beer that fit. You see where I went wrong there. "PILS...S"? I now realize I dodged a bullet there, as PINTS would've fit, and then who knows what mess I'd've gotten into. The other answer I struggled with was I HEART (39D: Start of many souvenir slogans). Just a godawful standalone answer. A partial t-shirt phrase? And you're representing a visual (💗) with a word? Even the phrase "souvenir slogans" made no sense to me. That answer was in the thick of the "OH" v. "OH" collision. Needless to say, not my favorite part of the puzzle.
Bullets:
- 31A: Feature of a cockatoo (CREST) — they're notoriously proud of their aristocratic heritage, so they always wear little jackets featuring their family CREST. Weird little birds.
- 50A: Syllables of hesitation (UHS) — who doesn't love a "syllable of hesitation!" [raises hand]. Always an opportunity to make a mistake. Mine, today: UMS.
- 3D: Fast-food pork sandwich with its own locator website (MCRIB) — no one loves a MCRIB more than the crossword. This is its 10th appearance. Though it appears with reasonable frequency now, it actually took 30 years (!) for the MCRIB to find its way into the grid. It debuted in 1981 (!?), but back then, the editor (Maleska) was not (at all) inclined to put brand names in the puzzle. It's not that there were none, probably, but there were few, and probably very few from the fast-food category. But even after Shortz comes to power, it takes the better part of two decades for MCRIB to show up (2011). Once it got into constructors' wordlists, though, it ... I wouldn't say "took off," but persisted, for sure. Bet you didn't expect a MCRIB lesson today, did you? You are welcome.
- 21D: Green-and-white sidekick of video games (YOSHI) —
See you next time.
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
Save And Share :
77 comments:
I agree with Rex that IHEART is a bad answer. IHEARD sounds like the beginning of a sales pitch, but not IHEART, which is a visual that makes no sound.
I get the theme when it comes to pompoms and tambourines, but why does one shake a Polaroid picture?
Otherwise, a pleasant and quite easy Tuesday solve.
TRANSLATE came as a surprise because whenever I see "dos" in a "?" clue, my assumption is that it's not Spanish but the plural of "do" as a noun. What's the surface meaning of that clue supposed to be anyway? The RATIO clue on the other hand is great "?"-less misdirection with a spot-on surface reading.
Solved this trivia fest as a themeless. WS should have deferred this one to Highlights or USA Today.
Beat on the BRAT
Or why not clue IHEART as "largest radio broadcaster in the U.S."?
I definitely remember shaking Polaroid pictures growing up - I guess to make them develop faster? But I also remember someone telling me at some point it wasn’t necessary.
One shakes a Polaroid picture to develop it, according to popular culture. According to Polaroid, shaking can cause the image to be blurred or otherwise damaged.
Is POLAROID still in business? I had one of their cameras as a kid (maybe 50 years ago). I don’t remember shaking anything - I would just watch as the picture slowly materialized.
I had YOStI crossing DOti. I’m really losing interest in guessing at video game characters every day. I believe Qatar’s capital made an appearance recently, but I never remember stuff like that.
100% came over as soon as I was done to figure out what the heck the “translate” clue was all about. Feel like an idiot now. Doubly so because we lived in Spain for 3 years and one of my kids is native fluent. Sigh. More coffee.
If you want to speak standard English then "I'm shook" is wrong - it should be "I'm shaken".
A little heavy on crossword staples. I think we can lose McRib for a while. That said it was ok for a Tuesday and the themers and the reveal did not make me groan. Thought that bit of it was well done and liked the fact that the reveal was the last solve.
I think you “shake” or wave the picture so it dries faster, doesn’t it come out of the camera a bit wet?
I found this super easy except that I spelled GALLOP wrong - put in GALLuP, so then DOHA was wrong and I did know it on some level but thought it could be DuHA. GALLuP seemed perfectly normal to me, So I couldn’t find my mistake and had to ask the puzzle to check.
I also agree with others about IHEART, weird clue that I didn’t quite understand, so I put in IHEARd (even though that didn’t really make sense either), and then it took a bit to work out TRANSLATE.
My “Syllables of hesitation” was EHS, and I didn’t remember the eel word that crossed it so it became a guessing game, trying to talk myself into AHS and OHS before hitting on the U.
See (hear?) also the OutKast song, "Hey Ya!" - one of the best songs of the past 25 years!
Notice in that Outkast video from rex that all the musicians, including the singer and the backup singers, are played by the same guy (Andre 3000).
Polaroids were great and I miss them.
I will never not object to OHHI in a grid, but I will always love seeing GNR.
Anyone familiar with the old riddle about President Grant can spot the problem with the cluing for 54D.
I too had trouble with IMCOMING/INCOMING.
I actually briefly changed OMANI to ONA** before deciding I was crazy and Muscat is definitely in Oman.
IMCOMING atop CARESSING was... something.
I don’t know if the Polaroid camera brand exists. My grandson, truly a child of the digital age, received for Christmas a little camera that takes an image and immediately prints out small black and white photographs. He loves it!
Well, I didn’t remember the part about having to shake a Polaroid picture, so my efforts to guess the revealer came to naught. I kept trying to think of something that included “hands”.
No matter. Also, no matter if there were any flaws in the puzzle – and there weren’t.
Any nits – and there weren’t – wouldn’t have mattered either.
Why? Because this solve ended with a pleasure punch that rocketed me smiling into my day. Those two OMG clues right at the end:
• [Make two dos, say], for TRANSLATE
• [A red one is rare], for STEAK
Leave me with a kapow like that, puzzle, and I’m your friend for life.
Thank you for that, Hanh, as well as for a lovely theme, for a make-my-heart smile clue – [“Such a charmer!] – for OH YOU (a debut clue, BTW), for a spotless grid despite the backward SPOT, and for a rare-in-crosswords five-letter semordnilap (SNIPS).
Yes, a heap of gratitude for this gem, Hanh. Bravo!
I thought TRANSLATE was such a fresh and clever answer. If only it hadn't been surrounded by such utter garbage as IHEART, UNAGI, UHS, SMS. Too busy trying to decipher what hesitation sound they were asking for or if SMS was going to be DMS or IMS for it to land properly. Shame.
I remember people sort of waving or fanning a newly pulled Polaroid photo — similar to how a tambourine is sometimes shaken, or how some people move their hands to dry the hand sanitizer.
Think of a time before GNR to Elvis being All Shook Up.
Quite a nice start to the day, Monday easy, with a handful of fresh answers and clues sprinkled in.
In my neighborhood back in the '60s, there was an ongoing argument about whether to wave the Polaroid pic around or not. Like many kids' arguments, it was never resolved
I found this crazy easy and raced through it unusually quickly, solving as a themeless… until I got to the SE. Then it took me a while to understand the revealer. Oh, okay, I get it. But I was a bit surprised that Rex liked the revealer so much.
I’M SHOOK that nobody has ranted about this grammatical abomination. Do people really say this?
It seeming a worrying decline in standards when us are just made up new rules of grammar to fitted into an crossword
Hey All !
SE corner definitely best part of puz. Seemed all the neat clues were down there. Nice Revealer, as the ole brain was refusing to see the connection of the Themers. Silly brain.
Tuesdays are the "worst" puz day, but this one was pretty neat. Easy, but nice answers and Theme. OH YOU, Hahn! 😁
Short for me, gonna GALLOP away now
Happy Tuesday!
No F's (IM SHOOK and in a ROIL)
RooMonster
DarrinV
Loved the TRANSLATE cluing as much as imagining Rex’s hamster wheel. Can’t beat a punny clue that rates a TEN.
Had a friend who served in the second (lowers eyes) Gulf War and he was stationed in DOHA for over a year. Most memorable thing was during a call while both watching a lunar eclipse and the moon had different orientations from our different vantage points.
Uh-uh-huh, I’M all SHOOK up.
I'm reporting the NYT to whoever is the Secretary of Destroying People's Freedom of Choice. Some nerve they have telling me at my advanced age to TRANSLATE (I think the procedure is called a GALLOP by DRS). Next thing you know, they'll want to know how many times per month IMCOMING.
I don't pay any attention anymore to commercials. It's all just ADDIN to me.
Nice Kealoa discovered by me with Vermin/VWBUGS. Next time I see a V and a beetle reference I'll just wait for the crosses.
Gotta admit, I couldn't guess the revealer even after getting all four themers. Loved the TRANSLATE clue. Nice puzz with about the right Tuesday crunch (oatmeal but with a few nuts) Hanh Huynh.
Enjoyed this puzzle. IHEART seemed a natural and the clue for steak was well done (oops, sorry ‘bout that, just slipped out). Two vowels were main problems: remembering the “U” in TAMBOURINE and starting with OHHo instead of OHHI, which is pretty traditional crosswordese. Finished late last night without thinking about the theme or revealer, so Rex’s explanation and this blog made good reading this morning.
Had all the themers and missed the connection, so the revealer was a nice suprprise. It was made even more surprising by being a phrase I've never said or heard. Oh well.
I do remember waving POLARAOIDPICTUREs around and then wondering why the images were so blurry. I think Mad Magazine ran one of those fake ads of a family trying to decipher a photo with the slogan "The 60 Second Disappointment".
DOHA I never remember, ditto for UNAGI. Lost maybe one nanosecond to grok TRANSLATE, but I did teach Spanish for a long time. I liked the unlikely combination of letters in VWBUGS.
Nice breezy Tuesday, HH, with some crunch in the SE. My High Hopes for a stunning revealer were realized, with some reservations (see above). Thanks for lots of fun.
This was my first stop after (finally) figuring out translate. I do really like the word play on dos but it flummoxed me for sure!
Fun puzzle made more fun by VWBUGS. My notoriously cheap parents always drove VWs while raising four boys in the ‘60s and ‘70s. My mom had the bus, my dad the bug. I learned how to drive in those rickety but reliable cars, and have nothing but fond memories of their many quirks.
Oh, yes. I remember people shaking those damn POLAROID PICTURES. More about that in a minute. But I couldn't guess what the theme answers had in common -- even though some sort of shaking did occur to me -- because I didn't know that you had to shake SPRAY PAINT. Guess I've never scrawled graffiti on anything.
Does anyone know why "Such a charmer" = OH YOU?
Wonderful un-Tuesdayish clues for TRANSLATE and STEAK. This gave the SE some resistance that I quite enjoyed.
A second almost name-free puzzle in a row. Do you think WS is, maybe, getting the message that an enormous number of us solvers really hate a plethora of unknown pop culture names in puzzles? Hope so!
And now a word about POLAROID PICTURES. The two most nauseating smells I've ever smelled in my life were 1) Formaldehyde and 2) the sticky, smelly sealer that was smeared on Polaroids before people shook them to dry them. It literally (no, I'm not misusing "literally") made me gag.
And how would a non-science-y person like me have ever come to smell Formaldehyde? The final exam of my "American Foreign Policy" course was given in the Chemistry building at Smith College -- don't ask me why. The smell was overwhelming and stomach-turning -- and I don't know how I survived the two hours I was in that room. Fortunately, I never again had to smell Formaldehyde. And as for that revolting POLAROID PICTURE sealer: all I can say is thank God for the advent of digital photography.
Set my personal best for a Tuesday. This whole puzzle whooshed for me with the exception of the UNAGI/UH dyad which, for me is a total Natick. One day I’ll learn to spell unagi/enagi/enaki…gimme a break. I’m somewhat new to this still.
Don’t remember ever shaking a Polaroid picture, and I took plenty of them. If you Google it, it’s a myth that you were supposed to shake them. But apparently there’s a song lyric that goes “Shake it like a Polaroid picture.”
Drying my hands under a blower in an Ohio men's room, I noticed the instructions:
1. Press button
2. Place hands under blower
3. Rub hands until dry
And someone added with a Sharpie:
4. Wipe hands on pants.
I had a POLAROID Land camera at one point, decades ago, but I don't recall any shaking being involved. The early models did require you to peel off a covering letter 60 seconds after the picture emerged from the camera, or something, but the newer ones did not. It was all a very long time ago, but certainly they weren't associated with being SHOOK in the way that POM POMS, SPRAY PAINT, & TAMBOURINEs are. So the theme didn't work for me.
Otherwise, I loved the puzzle--confirming that I can remember the capital of Qatar--who would have guessed? I even, somehow, remembered YOSHI once I had the YO.
I wanted PINTS (as in beer) before PICKS, and UmS before UHS--otherwise, it was smooth sailing throughout.
Lewis, I don't know how you do it--do you look at every answer to see what is spells backward? (E-GRAM! TARB!) Or do they just leap out and hit you in the eye?
Look it up, it's pretty standard slang and has been for years now.
It's a pretty standard slang term and has been for years.
"The first such answer was the first Down I looked at: 1D: Draft selections (PICKS). I had the "P" from POMPOMS and could not think of a beer that fit."
After I got POMPOMS, I put PALES in for draft selections. It definitely slowed me a bit, but when I got to KNIT I realized my mistake and from there I quickly figured out PICKS.
What about the crossing of YOSHI and DOHA. A definite Nadick for me.
It's slang/AAE, get with it
But “I’m shook” is the in the language/slang phrase to indicate shock. Nobody says “I’m shaken”
I liked this one. Fun with a few challenges here and there. Pretty close to a Tuesday best time for me.
Oh, those Ohioans are too funny, @Liveprof!!
I agree with @Nancy - an almost name-free & Rapper-free puzzle. I enjoyed it & I think I set a PB & for once didn't have to look for my typo.
Thank you, Hanh :)
Easy-medium. No WOEs.
Costly erasures: manIc before RABID, SlItS before SNIPS, and CRown before CREST.
Fun theme and very light on junk, liked it a bunch!
45D. VWB
“Volkswagen Beetle?” you shrug.
Nope. Instead, here’s a plug
For the Velvet Water Bug.
‘Fore you can say “Ugh”…
Down its hatch, chugalug,
Goes a springtail. Glug, glug.
Manmade poisons not needed,
Carbamates superseded,
It ingests unimpeded.
A draw from the jug,
Then a raise of my mug
In toast to this thug
The Velvet Water Bug
@jberg -- Actually, nerd that I am, I do. That, and check for double letters. Looking at the answers backward has enough times brought fun and amazing connections, to keep me doing it.
Sorry I'm late today. The dog ate the note from my Mother.
Easy-Medium. A little more crunch than a typical Tuesday.
Overwrites:
fijI before BALI at 10D (I'm no Pacific geography expert)
erS before UmS before UHS for the hesitations at 50A
My OB/GYns were mdS before they were DRs (51A)
WOEs:
GNR as an abbrev. for Guns N' Roses (14D)
YOSHI at 21D (should have remembered it from prior crosswords)
YES!
I haven’t heard it, and stumbled for the longest time in that (already tricky) corner, lamenting that I’M SHAKEN or I’M SHAKING didn’t fit when clearly that’s what the revealer wanted to be. I guess if I’ve ever heard the actual revealer before, my brain must have corrected the grammar before it reached my consciousness.
Pretty decent puztheme ... with POLAROIDPICTURE bein the shakiest.
staff weeject pick: GNR. Assumed it was Grand Nunk Railroad, til I got to here.
honrable mention to the equally shaky SMS -- might mean Spare Me the Spam, or somesuch.
some fave moments: The Jaws of Themedness. TRANSLATE clue. OHHI/OHYOU. IMCOMING & IMSHOOK -- with IMSHOOK havin more themers. All M&A could find for IMCOMING were ANAL CARESSING [and maybe ATOAST of PORT, to get things rollin].
Thanx for the fun, Mr. Huynh dude.
Masked & Anonymo5Us
.... now, prepare to get shook up good ...
"What's the Use" - 7x7 12 min. themed runt puzzle:
**gruntz**
M&A
No major problems until the SE corner, as many have said (though initially like Rex I was so sure of the bar setting on 1D that I changed POMPOMS to BATTONS to make BEER work). But then a combination of the fact that I didn’t know that I’M SHOOK is in the language (I could see the revealer was going to involve shaking and couldn’t find a way to fit a grammatically correct phrase there), the delightfully diabolical clue on TRANSLATE, and then the slightly less diabolical but still misdirecting clue on STEAK—on top of not knowing that DRANO doesn’t have ‘i’—I spent some time stumped. Thus when everything clicked at the end, it was a pretty exhilarating experience of back-to-back ahas. Nice.
I join those who have never said or heard anyone say I'M SHOOK. Even the more grammatically correct I'M SHAKEN sounds off. My guess is that the SHOOK vs SHAKEN was chosen only because of the letter count needed to match POM POMS.
About the closest to a natural, in the language phrase to my ear would be something along the lines of "That news has left me SHAKEN".
Maybe it's the Elvis Presley hit that makes me think you need an "UP" in there to really make any of those work.
Like @jberg, 50+ years ago I had a Polaroid camera but I had to pull the print out through the rollers, then wait a minute and peel off the cover. No shaking at all. Then the SX-70 came out, and there was no pulling or peeling, it spit the print out and you just watched it develop "in front of your eyes".
I was just looking in one of my photo albums, and the Polaroid prints have lasted beautifully for over half a century.
And yes, the last two puzzles have been a welcome respite from all the bloody names. MCRIB, ATARI, DRANO, and even YOSHI don't bother me too much today.
HA!!
Actually, there are new Polaroid cameras. My daughter-in-law has one. The pictures are just as yellow and grainy as they always were.
Loved Rex's comment on 32A. Still chuckling.
And agree re "syllables of hesitation".Uh,uhh, um, umm, mmm er, err, and probably others possibilities
Agree the clue for "translate" was clever and it took e a long time to get, even though I saw the dos as Spanish two right away.
yes, somehow it got into people's minds that if you shake a polaroid picture it will develop faster. but a.) it doesn't and b.) it can cause the chemicals in the bottom [white part] of the polaroid to leech up into the photo, ruining it. [okay, "ruining" is way too strong a word, but it can and does cause unintended and often unwanted effects - tho some folx purposely play with light and chemicals in both polaroids and other film to get different effects.] :)
-stephanie.
Frótale un poco de tierra.
Any puzzle with a cheerleader in it is fine by me. I'm a RABID fan. This was a delightful puzzle with such good humor and way too many naughty bits. That revealer is so weird as to be my favorite in a long time. That clue for TRANSLATE was epic.
DOHA and DILI this week. I'm pretty sure RUN is faster than GALLOP and when you're on a horse as a 12 year old, you definitely know the difference.
People: 4
Places: 4
Products: 5
Partials: 7
Foreignisms: 1
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 21 of 76 (28%)
Funnyisms: 7 😂
Tee-Hee: I'm not writing them down folks, cuz I wanna have my post appear, but UM yeah, I saw them ... all of them. Ew.
Uniclues:
1 Cheerleaders needing a rabies shot.
2 My gleeful shout every time I had a quarter in the Pong era.
3 Why Boomers and X-ers are on a first name basis with their dermatologist.
4 Bank with a foreign currency exchange in Hnojná Lhotka.
5 Subject of a Bob Dylan song at an earlier age.
6 Uno arriba.
7 Mafia member finds place for one who miscooked the books to wear cement galoshes. (It's the East River, by the way.)
8 German corporation asks Amanda Gorman to find rhymes for Farfegnugen.
9 Epic musical production featuring an overflowing toilet in Uluwatu.
10 What happens really when you're rude to the waitress and send your dinner back.
1 RABID POMPOMS (~)
2 I'M COMING ATARI!
3 SOLAR CARESSING (~)
4 SLAV YEN PEN
5 TAMBOURINE BRAT
6 TRANSLATE ONE UP (~)
7 PICKS CPA'S TOMB
8 VW BUGS USA POET (~)
9 BALI DRANO OPUS (~)
10 STEAK SEES DIRT (~)
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Dude without wifi out in the sprawl. ANALOG SUBURBAN.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
spray paint is used for tons of different crafts and DIY home improvement type projects, not just graffiti, fwiw!
-stephanie :)
this reminds me of one my most favorite hand-edited signs i've seen in a public restroom.
the original read, as many do, "employees must wash hands before returning to work"
below, someone had written in sharpie, "if no employee is available, you may wash your own hands."
-stephanie.
LostInPhilly nails it! And thanks, Rex, for including that great video.
@Anoa. You'd best guess again: (First sentence of the constructor's notes). "I wanted to use the revealer I’M SHOOK in an easy early-week puzzle."
Tougher than usual downs-only solve for me. Lots of white space after the first pass, which made inferring the acrosses fairly difficult. Didn't help that I opened with beerS as my as my first entry at 1D. Toughest part by far was the OHHI, OHYOU, IHEART section. Still finished in a normal sort of time for me and had fun doing so.
I totally smiled when I got the revealer. Very clever. I loved that there were very few names in the puzzle. And if one has to have names, MARGE of blue beehive Simpson ilk, is A-okay by me.
I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that was the whole point
@egs. My belief that the first themer, POM POMS, necessitated a 7 letter count matching I'M SHOOK (rather than the marginally more grammatically correct 8 letter I'M SHAKEN) remains unshaken.
Absolutely not. The modern, current expression is 100% I’M SHOOK. Grammar has nothing to do with it. Sometimes you see a facetious -eth suffix added (“I am shooketh”).
Hi @Bob Mills. In the very, very early days of Polaroids, they came out of the camera and you peeled a cover piece off the film and then had to rub a weird smelling stick of something that today would look like the innards of a glue stuck across the film to both encourage it to develop and to “set” the image. I’m talking here about the first Polaroids that you took out of the case and had to pull the lens forward on its telescoping aluminum frame. The first ones when ready to take pictures looked a lot like ancient cameras that required the photog to duck under the black cloth. My uncle Irwin was an artist/photographer and lover of curious inventions. He had shown me his dark room and let me help develop some shots a few times. His camera collection was enormous so of course he had the first Polaroid available. As I recall, it was several iterations later that you no longer had to separate the film parts and use what I called the “goop stick.” I believe the unnecessary shaking or fanning the Polaroid picture behavior came along once the “goop stick” was a thing of the past.
@Anon, maybe I"M SHOOK is itself a facetious expression, a fringe usage that plays on its not sounding quite right, an attempt to skirt if not violate grammar for the sake of it to appear trendy or chic. I'm not the only commenter today who gave the side-eye to I'M SHOOK.
hard for me to hate a sub-five minute Tuesday for any reason
My Dad, always an early adopter, took a photo of me in my 1st Communion dress with his new Polaroid camera, circa 1967. It involved the pungent-smelling mystery gel application after peeling off the copypaper-like paper. For me, the memory of the smell invokes nostalgia rather than @Nancy's unfortunate gag response.
Post a Comment