But my question is even MORE esoteric: in the book, there’s actually a grainy black and white photo of some of the cargo being unloaded in Mexico, circa 1985, including a couple of boxes of…something.
The black boxes in front, just distinctive enough that someone might be able to recognize the brand, but juuuuuuuust grainy and small enough that it’s driving me mad trying to figure out what it is. It looks like the words/brand in largest text is something like “ELESTIA”…or possibly “GLESTNIA” or “BAXTNA”…none of which are a name I recognize or could find traces of. There’s a photo of something on the front, presumably of the product, or of the product in use, but just looks like an indistinguishable gray box with loopy squiggles on it.
And, what looks tantalizingly like the words “82 watts” on the upper left corner of the box…and a similar box, a few feet behind it in the photo, that has text in the same spot that kind of looks like “24 watts.”
That’s all I got. None of the AIs I checked with had a clue, and I’m not certain I’ll be able to contact the author to find out. But, obviously, this IS one of the premier places you’d go to to try and identify a piece of historical ephemera that sounds like it came out of a Warren Zevon song.
So…can anyone weigh in? Maybe even a proud former owner of a GLXTNE™ brand Turboencabulator, happy to reminisce about the good ol’ days?
Agree. The black box in front is almost certainly a ceiling fan. The pic is quite clear. The large number and word(s) at upper left probably say “52 INCHES”. The brand above the pic could be nearly anything, but I favor something close to PLESTTOR.
The only other identifiable box toward the left rear in the third tier of boxes is the same thing. I think there are two more of the same; one behind the front box on the ground, and one 4 boxes back in the second tier. The rest of that stack of boxes look a bit like wooden crates, but are more likely to be the white underside of more of the same fan boxes. They’re very much all the same size.
I saw a ceiling fan as well before reading the comments. I was wondering if the name could be something like ELESTAIR, but I don’t think that quite works. (I thought I maybe saw AIR in there, working with the fan theme.)
Looked through the trademark office and saw two other ELESTARs in there, but neither match in terms of look or area of business. Could it be a brand name in Spanish that starts “EL” something? Though that only looks like a single word and it doesn’t fit the narrative of the photo.
I did wonder if the logo says FIESTAR, like fiesta and star mixed together. But that’s the name of a K-Pop band so looking up Fiestar Fans is a fruitless search.
“Enhance 224 to 176” “Enhance. Stop” “Move in, stop” “Pull out, track right, stop” “Center in, pull back. Stop” “Track 45 right. Stop” “Center and stop” “Enhance 34 to 36” “Pan right and pull back. Stop” “Enhance 34 to 46” “Pull back. Wait a minute, go right, stop” “Enhance 57 to 19” “Track 45 left. Stop” “Enhance 15 to 23” “Give me a hard copy right there”
