Somebody should invent TicTacs for insomniacs that come in a padded box.

It’s the wee hours of Monday morning, Sam’s still asleep and Howdygram headquarters is bathed in silence except for the occasional rattle of TicTacs.

This actually brings me to my first brainstorm of the day. Somebody should invent TicTacs for insomniacs that come in a padded box.

Browser bulletin! To those of you using a Mac with the latest version of Safari I apologize if the Howdygram has started looking stupid. It seems that Safari no longer recognizes certain features of Blogspot’s layout software and I can’t figure out how to fix it. The date above every post and the footer below my signature are supposed to be 9-point type, and both are displayed correctly if you use Firefox, Chrome or Explorer. In Safari, though, they appear about three times larger. I’m guessing Apple is retranslating layouts to be compatible with iPads and iPhones, but right now I’m looking at this situation like an irritating glitch. As a result I stopped using Safari 6.0 on my Mac a few weeks ago and switched back to Firefox.

Humor me for a few minutes while I review a couple of surprisingly good Warren William movies that we watched yesterday ... The Match King (1932) with Lili Damita and Arsène Lupin Returns (1938) with Melvyn Douglas.

The Match King definitely was a curiosity. I thought the plot was way too evil to be fiction and it turns out I was right. This movie tells the true story of Ivar Kreuger — played by Warren William as “Paul Kroll” — who was the Bernie Madoff of the 1920s. Kreuger operated an enormous international Ponzi scheme that defrauded cash-poor governments by exchanging bogus loans for a manufacturing monopoly on matches. Seriously! In the process he stole, he lied, he blackmailed, he cheated friends, he hired spies, he sent innocent men to prison, committed others to mental hospitals and even murdered someone. Kreuger’s world fell apart in 1932 when he sold $40,000,000 in counterfeit Italian government bonds on Wall Street and eventually jumped to his death from his office window in Sweden when authorities started closing in. HOLY CRAP.

 Arsène Lupin Returns was a fun adventure in suspense with Melvyn Douglas in the title role as an international jewel thief; Warren William played the insurance detective on his trail. The terrific supporting cast included a lot of familiar faces (to me, anyway) such as Monty Woolley, Virginia Bruce, Nat Pendleton and John Halliday. My one complaint: the running time was only 81 minutes! (I can never get enough Melvyn Douglas.)

Maybe I should think about going back to bed for a few hours so I’ll be awake when it’s time for lunch! We’re trying another Tex-Mex restaurant today from the Best of Dallas list, this time either Mattito’s or Blue Goose Cantina. A review will follow. Thank you.