AS I lAY DYING

James Franco is popping up everywhere in the media. Apparently he was in ten movies in 2013 that I never heard of, plus a guest appearance on two episodes of The Mindy Project and a recent interview on The Howard Stern Show.  And now, as Joe Clark points out, he's making his #lowercaseL debut via Twitter and Instagram!  I suppose I'm looking forward to checking out "Logan marshal green in AS I lAY DYING!" on October 11, as Franco suggests with a tweet, especially since I liked Marshall-Green as Charlie Holloway in Prometheus.  I'm also looking forward to Franco issuing a public apology and explanation for how the HEll he managed to switch off CAPS-LOCK on his iPhone mid-Tweet.  Now I'm skeptical about the release date, too—he may have actually meant October LL,  Roman numerals for 50+50, or October 100, which is not for a while.

ClOSED CAPTIONING

Jacky explains:

Tonight while watching the most recent episode of Smash ("The Tonys") on IMDb through Hulu, I spotted the strangest lowercase L. I have some hearing problems so I watch most shows with closed captioning, and there it was my first lowercase L, in the abbreviation for Los Angeles (or l.A.).

My guess is that some intern is typing these captions in real time, hit that shift key a split second too late. Or he's actually heading to Iowa.

Sukkah City FIlM

Brooklyn documentary filmmaker and friend, Jason Hutt, announces, in a timely fashion, Sukkah City, his behind the scenes film about the architecture competition of the same name, in which artists re-imagined the sukkah archetype, and the 12 winning structures were displayed in Union Square in New York City.  Pictured above is one of the winning structures.  Look closely at the white sign above and to the left of the black hatted sukkah goer. "Out of GAS Need HElP" is just one of the many pleas for gas, and HElP, featured in this collage of cardboard calling cards.  Look for Hutt's film in spring 2013.

Teenage Mutant Ninja TURTlES

Matt G. discovered this double-L SCROll key in the 1994 Season 8 episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles titled "Enter Krakus". It looks like it might be a case of the squeeze, but Matt believes this may be a symptom of a larger Engrish problem, as the cartoons and lettering are all produced overseas. Here's another example from the 1993 Season 7 episode, a store sign for TElEVISIONS in "The Starchild":

Heroes in a HAlF-L!

Hand-Drawn BlOCK lETTERS

Yitz Complicated shares this apropos trailer with lowercase L readers, figuring we like this kind of stuff.

Office 2010

"Intelligence has confirmed a hacker has released a rogue font on the Internet ... We need to identify this threat and eliminate it."

I wonder if this rogue font is all uppercase letters ... except for the L?

"All the world's fonts are at stake ... Double-space, widen the margins, increase the font size!"

KAlAMAZOO

Ali O gets extra credit for sending this one in:

So this one is from my history teacher, whom I've had for two years now. He's always written notes like this and it has always bothered me. When I saw your blog I was like, "Yes! Other people understand!" So I had to get a picture of it. Plus, his handwriting is horribe which just adds to the overall annoyance factor. Sorry about the quality of it, sort of a spur-of-the-moment decision and all I had was my phone.

KAlAMAZOO COllEGE is pretty great, but I wonder what film was presented by the MUSlIM STUDENT ASSOCIATION ... maybe New Muslim Cool? Either way, what I especially like is that the professor took extra care to serif the capital i in MUSlIM so it is distinctly i-ish, but made the L extra lowercase. This is a fundamental Muslim mistake.

GOD BlESS US

Over the weekend here in NYC, Rooftop Films showcased New Muslim Cool, a documentary film about Puerto Rican American rapper Hamza Pérez and his journey from drug dealer to religious Muslim. The movie, directed by Jennifer Maytorena Taylor, is getting impressive international recognition, and is even being featured on POV on PBS. But would the film be getting this much attention if it had not been for this production still of the words GOD BlESS US written with all uppercase letters — except for the L — in graffiti on a public trash can in the North Side of Pittsburgh?

This is not the first case of a graffiti BlESS!

AlDWYCH

Gary C is back with another FREEZE FRAME FIlM FIND. This miniature playing card, stuck to the bottom of a beer mug in The Prestige wasn't easy to find, especially since I was fast forwarding through the movie specifically to find it, based on Gary's tip. I resorted to searching for the term "card" in the movie script I found online, then honed in on that five second bit based on listening for the dialogue around it, and corresponding that dialogue to the script.

Screenshot taken around 01:35:15. The scene unfolds as written in the movie script on page 100:

INT. PUBLIC HOUSE -- NIGHT

Cutter is finishing his meal at the bar. He goes to take a swig from his pint and FREEZES- at the bottom of the glass: A PLAYING CARD. He looks around the bar. No one he recognizes. He reaches into the glass.

Cutter pulls out the card- an ADDRESS is written up one side.

And for the cartophiles out there, here is the actual 230 AlDWYCH, LONDON, where the restaurant Thai Square can be found:


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The ITAlIAN STAllION is back!

Was that Rocky II we saw in 1979, or could it have been Rocky LL? And might Rocky actually have had the lowercase L of the Tiger? Of course it was Rocky "2", as in the sequel to the 1976 film, Rocky, and he naturally had the Eye of the Tiger. But I have my doubts, now that Gary C. pointed out this amazing scene in which Rocky Balboa struggles with cue cards while shooting a commercial for Beast Aftershave.

In this humiliating scene, our beleaguered hero has great difficulty reading the simple lines, and claims in defiance that he is not "punchy", but merely has what you call a "relaxed brain". Having witnessed the brutal, repeated beatings that Apollo Creed previously unleashed on Rocky, we suspect this "relaxed brain" syndrome is more like brain damage. But after reading the "dummy boards" myself, I actually believe Rocky! When the cue card is revealed to us, we can finally see why he's having such difficulty reading his lines: "IN THE MORNING .. I SPLASH IT ON AN' IT DOES SMELL MANlY ...." That would cause me pause, too. Look closely, and you'll notice that not only is MANlY spelled with a lowercase L, but it is also in a different handwriting style than the rest of the cue card, and seems to be written on a corrective paper sheet overlay. Makes me wonder what horrific error the prop master was trying to cover up in the first place, if this new one was so much more acceptable.

Watch the Rocky II Beast Aftershave scene on YouTube in all it's lowercase L glory!

BURl IVES

Image captured by Matt Garvey

In the spirit of the holiday season just passed I'm posting this Christmasy screen capture. Remember the old stop motion animated television special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer? Buddy Haskill pointed me toward this title card in the intro, "BURl IVES SINGS". You can watch the movie on YouTube, but do it quick before Google catches it and takes it down ... not because of the copyright issue, but because of the appalling use of a lowercase L in BURl's credit.