THE DESK SET

William Marchant’s The Desk Set is an entertaining 1955 Broadway comedy which
revolves around one of the 50s’ biggest fears. No, not fear of communism or of
nuclear war, but rather the fear of the machine replacing man at the workplace.
Here, the machine is a gigantic (especially by today’s standards) computer called
E.M.M.A.R.A.C, nicknamed “Emmy,” and the workplace is the Reference
Department of IBC, a large radio and television broadcasting company in
midtown Manhattan.
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THE NEIGHBORHOOD CRIME WATCH

NOT RECOMMENDED

In Craig Alpaugh’s The Neighborhood Crime Watch, a pair of burglars break into a
Canoga Park home.  One wears pantyhose over his head, the legs dangling over
his face like long rabbit ears.  The other is elegantly dressed. They are brothers,
improbably so as the elegantly dressed one looks thirty to forty years older than the
one wearing the panty hose, once he has removed them.  Older brother would
rather die than go back to prison he says. After all, “prisons are filled with
dangerous criminals and elected officials.”  The burgling brothers have been
nicknamed “The Brunch Bandits.”  Their motto is “We dine and then we steal,”
though all they can find in the kitchen of this house is a boring tuna fish sandwich.
(In an early break-in, there wasn’t a thing to eat, so they ordered pizza.)
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