Celebrity Auction

Be careful what you leave behind when you die. It might end up in a celebrity auction.

Welcome to Press Pass, the podcast spin-off of your favorite Substack newsletter of the same name. Because, yes, I am a one-man brand. I'm also Daedalus Howell, author, auteur, journalist, emphasis unleashed. And I'm producing this podcast to short-circuit any small talk that should occur when we next run into each other. You will know what I'm doing, and I sure as hell know what you're doing.

If we haven't been acquainted, you may know me from such films as Werewolf Serenade, Pill Head, or my novels, Quantum Deadline, Lay Projectionist, my other book, I Heart Sonoma. There's a handful of newspapers and magazines I'm the editor of as well—Bohemian, Pacific Sun, North Bay Magazine, American Muffler and Suspension. I do it all.

But this week in Press Pass... Just in time for the Valentine's holiday, I will be exploring how Nathanael West's 1933 novella, Miss Lonelyhearts, which, as you know, is about a newspaper advice columnist who spirals into drinking and other terrible life choices. Basically, my career. Anyway, we're going to look at that and how it's affected not just me, but media in general, which means it also affected you whether you know it or not. That's coming out Thursday on Press Pass, the newsletter, which you can get at dhowell.substack.com.

Now let's take a moment because it's time for my favorite press release. These are releases that I received this last week that I thought you might enjoy.

Let's start with Julian's Auctions presents Spotlight: History and Technology, a curated collection of important artifacts from landmark events and leaders of the 20th and 21st centuries. So here's some U.S. presidential memorabilia that's been deemed important, or they call it important. I suppose that depends on what your definition of important is.

But Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Dan Aykroyd, and Jim Belushi. So we have the Clinton administration, top guys, and one and a half Blues Brothers, technically, I guess. Anyway, these guys signed a House of Blues 1996 campaign event pair of sunglasses. So that's on auction, thanks to Julian's Auctions.

Barack Obama game-worn golf shoes and signed Phoenician Resort Register. Okay, so that's President Barack Obama's game-worn. So I guess that means he wore these golf shoes during a game of golf. And then he signed the Phoenician Resort Register. Wherever that is. Phoenicia? I don't know.

John F. Kennedy owned World War II Navy-issued boxer shorts. That's JFK-owned WW2 boxer shorts. Wow.

And then from the IT department, we've got Steve Jobs, 1984 Macintosh computer release, photo shoot, and video-worn bow tie. So let's break that down. Steve Jobs, check. 1984, check. Macintosh computer release, check. And I thought they were going to go for the computer, like something, you know, like the Fat Mac or something we'd see in the Smithsonian, which they do have. But no, it's the photo shoot and video-worn—so that's like hyphen-worn, meaning it was worn in the photo shoot and video—bow tie, the bow tie, the actual bow tie he wore.

Now, I gotta say, part of me thinks that's casually kind of cool. Definitely cooler than the Mark Zuckerberg favorite worn 2010 Facebook hoodie with signed letter. Letter of what? Letter of admission that he's an asshole? We already know that. We don't need the letter.

Anyway, that's from my favorite press release this week.

And now a word from our sponsor.

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Thanks to ComputerLand for supporting the show, and thanks to you for listening to Press Pass, which is available wherever quality podcasts can be heard. Read the newsletter every Thursday and find links to it all, including socials, at dhowell.com.