🧺🐑🍒🍧𝜗𝜚˚ ₊‧

Little Shop of Horrors takes place sometime in the early 60s, but it's hard to pin down the exact year. A radio broadcast mentions President Kennedy, so that narrows it down to 1961, 1962, or 1963. During the song Feed Me (Git It), one of the offers Audrey II waves in Seymour's face is a "guest spot on Jack Paar." Jack Paar hosted the Tonight Show from July 29, 1957 to March 30, 1962. The opening line of the movie says that the events took place on the 23rd day of the month of September, so if we assume Jack Paar was still on the air when Audrey II mentioned him, then 1962 and 1963 are off the table, meaning is has to be 1961, right? Well, after Seymour kills Mr. Mushnik allows Audrey II to kill Mr. Mushnik, we get a short montage of offers and contracts and magazine covers to establish that Seymour's star is rising. One of the covers is a TV Guide for the week of October 6 - 12.

October 6th was a Sunday in 1963, not 1961, so that complicated things until I googled existing TV Guides and learned that they don't start the week on Sunday, but Saturday instead.

April 23 - 29, 1983 (Saturday to Friday) December 27, 1980 - January 2, 1981 (Saturday to Friday)

October 6 - 12 was a Saturday to Friday in 1962.

If we assume Audrey II just pulled the first famous talkshow host name it could think of regardless of whether or not he was still on the air, then 1962 remains our best bet because in the director's cut ending where the plants take over the world there's one shot of Audrey II bursting through a movie theater marquee advertising Jason and the Argonauts, a Ray Harryhausen movie which premiered June 13, 1963.

Little Shop of Horrors starts on September 23, 1962.

Seymour gets his face on the cover of Life and the TV Guide the following month.

Audrey II would hit store shelves just in time for Christmas, spreading around the country faster than hula hoops and the Twist, taking over the world sometime in the new year.

📸 Terry O'Neill

Animator’s sketch from the Bewitched opening credits. Hanna-Barbera circa 1964.

Joan, Pauline and Mimi Baez's anti-draft poster, 1968

📸 Jim Marshall

Something's Got to Give

Mylène Demongeot

Betye Saar

House of Tarot

1960

MoMA New York

i want all of their dresses so bad

HELP 😭😭

Young Beatles fans in A Hard Day's Night (1964)

Linda Ronstadt poses for a portrait for her first solo album "Hand Sown ... Home Grown" in Topanga, California on March 1, 1968. Photo by Ed Caraeff.

Pete and Keith.

Dionysus in Wisconsin

Fall, 1969. Ulysses Lenkov is a grad student in the Department of Magic Studies at UW-Madison. When a local seer warns him something dangerous is coming, his investigation leads him to Sam Sterling, an archivist and community theater nerd who's standing directly in the path of an arriving god. Soon the two are helping each other through demon attacks, discovering the unsavory history of Sam's family, and racing to find a solution that doesn't lead to heartbreak and death. But as the year draws to a close, they'll face a deadly showdown as they try to save Sam—and the city itself. It's the first in a series, but there's no cliffhanger and it has a HEA.

You might like Dionysus in Wisconsin...

If you are a former Gifted kid who had an obsession with mythology and enjoy m/m romance with a touch of gritty noir and heady magic

If you love the way certain words feel in your mouth

If you were a theater kid or ever wanted your best friend to be a sentient library

If you're a diehard KJ Charles or Cat Sebastian or Jordan L. Hawk stan

If you ever want someone to get their urban fantasy in your romance novel

If you think a historical novel set in the 60s without any homophobia might be fun

If you have undiagnosed or late diagnosed ADHD and you wish you could simultaneously be a traveling bard and the inventor of time travel

If you really like band T-shirts and getting caught in the rain.

If you--just, you know what, go get it. Stop waiting.

Amazon link! Universal links!

The paperback is real pretty too, just so you know: