For those who care — and there probably aren’t too many of you — the post about my All-Time Favorite Movies is still forthcoming. To keep you amused in the meantime, however, let me direct your attention to Stagworld, the latest irreverent (or is that irrelevant?) section of James Lileks’ very funny Institute of Official Cheer web site.

A little background information: James Lileks is a collector of ephemera,which consists of old paper items like postcards, matchbooks, magazines and cookbooks. On the Institute site, he shares with us the more dated and bizarre stuff in his collection, supplemented with his own amusing commentary and captions. This exercise sounds kind of pointless, and I suppose it is — making fun of stuff produced by the naive America of fifty years ago is sometimes like shooting fish in the cliche’d barrel — but James has a sharp wit and these pages always make me laugh out loud. Sometimes they’re even educational, giving us a glimpse of a long forgotten pop culture that existed before the rise of Cable TV.

If you go exploring around James’ site, be warned that his blog can sometimes get a little shrill, depending on your politics. Hope you enjoy yourselves.