Saturday, December 04, 2010

Found another Willie

Well proof that Willie was shilling for the Whaler Bar at least into 1963 - here is an ad from the May 5, 1963 issue of The New Yorker.


At first glance it appears that Willie's untreated alcoholism has finally caught up with him and he's forced to live in a barrel, but on perusing the text it seems that rather he is in hiding - presumably from "The Wanderer"'s owner - and passing the word to his other ne'er-do-well friends that an unguarded load of hooch will be on-hand. The binnacle list is apparently a ship's "sick list" - in this case I'm guessing sick from drinking themselves sick and thanks to Willie they'll be doing it all over again.

How the Whaler Bar managed to stay in business for eighty-five years is certainly no thanks to Willie.

I'd be making better progress in searching for the last New Yorker in which Willie appears if I hadn't been spending so much time doing the New Yorker jigsaw puzzle available online. The puzzle is of a randomly selected New Yorker cover, and it takes me even longer to do a puzzle because it has to be the right cover. Many New Yorker covers are quite beautiful, but many are not, and I only want to do one of the beautiful ones. Also, it can't be too empty or too busy or it takes forever to do it - my average at Level 2 is about 10 minutes. Level 1 is ridiculously easy and Level 3... well let's just say that there is an hour and forty minutes I'll never get back.

I knew this one would be pretty easy - I did it in 9:36. Under the usual 10 minute mark. I should have been even faster but Mr. Fuzz was bugging me to play mousie time with him.