This is a "house ad" from the most recent Amtrak system timetable, with the relevant portion circled by me:



Talk about putting a good face on tragedy: the safety cards are there primarily because of this incident (along with glow-in-the-dark tape on the emergency window releases, and various other safety improvements).

This morning, a woman got on my bus carrying a purse and reading material, and it was something I don't remember ever seeing someone sitting down to read in public before: a copy of TV Guide. (A subscription copy, no less.)

Note to myself so I don't have to go through Identifont again: the very attractive font used by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority here in L.A. is called FF Scala Sans.

How big a deal is the upcoming change in the format of TV Guide? Big enough that a newspaper columnist in New Hampshire used me as an expert. (I swear, I told him I lived in Van Nuys, California, and yet he identified me as a "Florida collector"; I must have confused him by talking about where I grew up and first got interested in TV Guide's local editions.)

Edited later to add: Since I have a Google News Alert set up for "Ellwanger," I just had the delightful experience of getting a news alert for myself, which looked like this...

TV Guide collectors bid farewell to pop-culture icon
Nashua Telegraph - Nashua,NH,USA
... standup routine in that episode is an observation that TV Guide
is America's most-thrown magazine," recalls Florida collector
Jim Ellwanger, who moderates ...

Production assistant John, stopping by my desk: "Today I have to go to Victoria's Secret to buy fake boobs."

Man sitting in front of me on the bus, on cell phone: "I'll be there in 5 to 10 minutes. I was going to stop and get a knish."