Howard Owens

• The Edsel debuts.
• Movies and TV from 1958
• An H-Bomb was lost.
• The Braves won the World Series.
• Bobby Fisher, at 14, won the Chess Championship
• Iraq's monarchy is overthrown.
• NASA is formed.
• Gary Numan is born.
• So is Neil Finn.
• And Thomas Dolby.
• W.C. Handy died.
• They gave out Oscars in 1958.
• In 1958, the Grammy Awards started, with Louis Prima and Keely Smith among the winners, with no award for rock and roll (though the Champs won for best rhythm and blues) and album covers were honored. Now, that's cool.
• There were also Emmys in 1958.
• There was fashion in 1958
• Buick put out a pretty cool coupe in 1958.
• This was how Chevy was marketing the Impala in 1958.
• Here are some books from 1958.

These are things that home sellers do (both FSBO and agents) that are irritating and potentially cost them sales:

• Advertising an open house, then not open up.
• Hang a for-sale sign, then not include an info box on the sign pole.
• Hang an info box, but let it run out of flyers and not restock it.
• Hang an info box, stock it with flyers but neglect to include the asking price.
• Almost universally, neglect to mention the square footage on the flyer or in the newspaper ad.
• Worse, leave square footage off the Web site listing.
• Not include the year built on the flyer.
• As a FSBO, state on your flyer that you won't deal with a buyer represented by an agent.
• As a FSBO, over value your house -- pretty much a universal FSBO mistake.

If leaving the price off the flyer is considered a business strategy, it's a pretty shitty one. It communicates, "we care less about serving you and more about looking for an opportunity to hard sell you." We pretty much have a policy of trashing flyers without pricing on them, unless the house, from the outside, looks too good to pass up. So far, no house without a price has met that criteria. There's a ton of homes for sale in Bakersfield. There's very little incentive for us to put up with seller who from the get-go are determined to frustrate you?

We just finished watching The Life of Emile Zola staring Paul Muni. It's the third or fourth Muni we've watched recently.

Muni isn't a name you hear much about these days -- and it was only through a mention by a co-worker at the Star that I thought to add him to the Tivo wishlist -- but he was a hell of an actor. These days people lionize Bogart and Gable, but Muni was an actor decades ahead of his time. While men like James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson largely played themselves from movie to movie, Muni really acted. He adapted himself to the role and transformed his personality to fit the part. He has more in common with Dustin Hoffman or Al Pacino than John Wayne or Spencer Tracy.

The only thing I can figure is Bogart, Wayne, Robinson, Cagney et. al were towering personalities, where Muni lost himself in his roles, so people identify less with him than the iconoclastic figures of the era. I don't know much about who the Nick Cages and Kevin Spacys admire from the mid 20th Century, but I've got to believe actors who really know acting know all about Paul Muni.

P.S. In honor Bob Denver, we're now watching an episode of Gillian's Island that Tivo was nice enough to save for us.

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