Twelve movies

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers. Sources: Criterion Channel, PBS, TCM.]

British Intelligence (dir. Terry Morse, 1940). It’s 1917, and British war plans are repeatedly undermined by a German master spy, identity unknown. The action centers on a cabinet minister’s household, whose residents include a French servant (Boris Karloff) and a British subject who was taken prisoner in Germany (Margaret Lindsay) — each of whom might be a German agent or a British double agent. What makes this movie a delight: the viewer’s sense of who might be what changes with every twist in the plot. My favorite bit: a secretary sending a message by typewriter, tapping out dots and dashes for the ears of an alert listener in an office waiting room. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

The Gangster (dir. Gordon Wiles, 1947). The plot is negligible: gangster Shubunka (Barry Sullivan) and soda-fountain owner Jammey (Akim Tamiroff) run the numbers on Neptune Beach (a stand-in for Rockaway Beach); rival gangster Cornell (Sheldon Leonard) moves in to take over. Shubunka is a mess: needy, even paranoid, in his relationship with nightclub singer Nancy (Belita), unwilling to listen to reason in his business affairs, and headed, it would appear, for doom. The reasons to watch: the movie’s striking cinematography (Paul Ivano) and over-the-top dialogue (Daniel Fuchs, in a screenplay from his 1937 novel Low Company: “I came up out of a sewer, out of the muck and mud: I came up by myself!”). With a deep cast of supporting players: Elisha Cook Jr., Fifi D’Orsay, Leif Erickson, John Ireland, Joan Lorring, Charles McGraw, Harry Morgan, Shelley Winters, and good old Murray Alper. ★★★★ (TCM)

[Another film from our household’s favorite year in movies.]

*

Cafe Hostess (dir. Sidney Salkow, 1940). Ann Dvorak is Jo, a hostess in Club 46, drinking and dancing and rolling suckers for their money. A visiting sailor instantly falls in love with Jo and wants to take her away from all that, but Jo’s suitor, a creepy house pianist (who looks like a Mark Trail villain), won’t stand for it. The more interesting story here is that of Annie (Wynne Gibson), who left work at the club but, having found her past impossible to escape, comes back. Annie’s story might have made a fine pre-Code picture, but the implausible love story, a strolling police sergeant, and absurd fight scenes dominate the proceedings. ★ (TCM)

*

From Headquarters (dir. William Dieterle, 1933). Aside from the flashback accounts of witnesses and suspects, it’s a murder mystery that takes place entirely at, yes, headquarters. Partly a police procedural, with fingerprints, punch cards, ballistic tests, blood and hair analysis, and an autopsy — called “the carving.” (Yes, it’s pre-Code.) Partly a love story, with George Brent as a police lieutenant and Margaret Lindsay as a love interest and suspect. Inventive camera work by William Rees (here spelled Reese) and the oversized presence of Eugene Pallette add interest. ★★★ (TCM)

*

The Young Philadelphians (dir. Vincent Sherman, 1959). Paul Newman called it “just a glorified cosmopolitan soap opera,” but it’s a good one. Newman stars as Tony Judson Lawrence, a young lawyer intent on social and professional climbing, by any means necessary, and finally challenged to do the right thing at great risk to his reputation. Featuring a closeted husband (Adam West), a woman trapped in marriage to a much older husband (Alexis Smith, Otto Kruger), a hapless alcoholic (Robert Vaughn), and a beautiful young socialite (Barbara Rush) who watches Tony’s ascent. ★★★ (TCM)

*

Bewitched (dir. Arch Obler, 1945). Phyllis Thaxter (best known to me as Gil’s mom in The World of Henry Orient) is Joan, a bright, capable young woman, the kind who returns her library books on time. But inside her head there’s a voice — and it belongs to Karen (Audrey Totter), an alter-ego bent on sex and murder. Radioesque (the director was known for radio dramas), claustrophobic, psychologically dubious but nevertheless unnerving, almost David Lynch-like at times. With Edmund Gwenn as a psychiatrist and exorcist of sorts. ★★★ (TCM)

*

Chase a Crooked Shadow (dir. Michael Anderson, 1958). And talk about unnerving: one year after Kimberley Prescott’s (Anne Baxter) brother Ward died in an auto accident, a lookalike (Richard Todd) shows up at her Barcelona villa claiming to be Ward. And everything checks out, as the chief of police (Herbert Lom) confirms. What is Ward 2 after, anyway? Douglas Fairbanks Jr., who produced, appears at the story’s end asking viewers not to give away the plot, and I’m not going to cross Douglas Fairbanks Jr. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

The Red Shoes (dir. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1948). A deliriously beautiful (and beautifully restored) extravaganza in Technicolor. The plot isn’t much: Victoria Page (Moira Shearer) becomes the prima ballerina of The Ballet of the Red Shoes, in a ballet company run by dictatorial, possessive Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook), who demands that Victoria choose between dance and her husband, composer Julian Craster (Marius Goring). It’s no spoiler to say that the story will not end well. While the surreal Ballet of the Red Shoes is an extraordinary sequence in film, the final moments of its reprise might be even more remarkable. ★★★★ (CC)
*

Ransom! (dir. Alex Segal, 1956). When the eight-year-old son of wealthy David and Edith Stannard (Glenn Ford and Donna Reed) is kidnapped, David decides not to pay the ransom, a dangerous even if logical gamble. When he announces his decision on local television, angry crowds gather outside the Stannard house (there’s even an ice-cream truck) as members of the press try to push their way in. Ford is fine as a man in desperate circumstances, but Reed has little to do, spending much of the movie under enforced sedation (I’m reminded of how Athena puts Penelope is put to sleep while Odysseus disposes of the suitors). The larger problem with the movie is that there’s never any doubt that a happy ending is in the offing. ★★★ (TCM)

*

Art Spiegelman: Disaster in My Muse (dir. Molly Bernstein and Philip Dolin, 2024). A portrait of the artist, with copious examples of his work (hit Pause), from teenage comics to college-newspaper cartoons to Wacky Packages to underground comix to Maus and beyond. Disaster is indeed a thread that runs through Spiegelman’s work, from the Holocaust to September 11 (a famed New Yorker cover) to Gaza, the subject of a recent three-pager with Joe Sacco. Maus looms over everything, a monument that Spiegelman says he long tried to evade but now embraces as a warning in a time of renewed fascism. With R. Crumb, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Bill Griffith, Françoise Mouly (Spiegelman’s wife), and other artists. ★★★★ (PBS)

*

… One Third of a Nation (dir. Dudley Murphy, 1939). The title comes from Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s second inaugural address: “I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.” The movie, adapted from Arthur Arent’s 1938 Federal Theatre Project play, begins as a grim depiction of tenement conditions, with bodies lining a street after a rickety building goes up in flames. An ambiguous love triangle takes shape, with a remarkably benevolent slumlord (Leif Erickson), a lovely tenement dweller (Sylvia Sidney), and a “kind of left” fellow (Myron McCormick) who serves as an cultural/economic conscience as the story develops. As in any number of pre-Code movies, there’s the possibility that someone will cross class lines, but you’ll have to watch to see whether that happens. ★★★ (TCM)

[When I watched, I thought of my paternal great-grandfather, who died of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-seven: that was tenement life in the nineteenth century.]

*

Strange Interlude (dir. Robert Z. Leonard, 1932). An unusual pre-Code effort, a condensed and sanitized version of Eugene O’Neill’s play, with characters’ thoughts presented via voiceovers. The story is soap-operatic on a grand scale: Nina (Norma Shearer), who has lost her fiancé Gordon in the Great War, marries his earnest friend Sam (Earle Larimore) before learning that, unbeknownst to him, insanity runs in Sam’s family. Terrified of having a child with her husband, she turns to a dashing doctor (Clark Gable), and they (of course) fall in love. And lurking about at all times is Charlie (Ralph Morgan), another war vet who’s long pined for Nina. The play, in nine acts, ran five to six hours; the film runs a more kindly 1:49. ★★★ (TCM)

Related reading
All OCA “twelve movies” posts (Pinboard)

[Anyone who watches Strange Interlude thereby earns the right to watch Groucho Marx having a strange interlude in Animal Crackers.]

Twelve movies

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers. Sources: Criterion Channel, Netflix, TCM, YouTube.]

Wanted for Murder (dir. Lawrence Huntington, 1946). Eric Portman stars as Victor James Colebrooke, aka Tom Maren. There’s good reason for him to want to renounce the name Colebrooke, a name that helps to explain his compulsion to kill women. A superior thriller with Hitchcock overtones and London locations. Creepiest scene: the diary. ★★★★ (YT)

*

From the Criterion Channel feature Noir and the Blacklist

Intruder in the Dust (dir. Clarence Brown, 1949). From William Faulkner’s novel, a detective story of sorts, in which the murder of a white man is pinned on a Black man, Lucas Beauchamp (Juano Hernandez). A handful of courageous people — the lawyer John Gavin Stevens (David Brian), his nephew Chick Mallison (Claude Jarman Jr.), the son of the Mallison family’s maid, Alexander (Elzie Emanuel), and an eccentric spinster named Miss Habersham (Elizabeth Patterson) — join forces to stave off a lynching and solve the crime. As in To Kill a Mockingbird, the point seems to be that white people can do the right thing, but Intruder in the Dust is great filmmaking nonetheless. Filmed on location in Faulkner’s Oxford, Mississippi, with brilliant cinematography by Robert Surtees. ★★★★

The Lawless (dir. Joseph Losey, 1950). “This is the story of a town and of some of its people, who, in the grip of blind anger forgot their American heritage of tolerance and decency, and became lawless.” In a California agricultural town, a fight between breaks out at a dance and just like that — the fight is cast as a riot, and a young Latino migrant worker, Paul Rodriguez (Lalo Rois), is arrested, branded a “fruit tramp,” and paraded before TV cameras in a theater of cruelty. When a newspaper editor (Macdonald Carey) stands up for Rodriguez, greater trouble follows, and good grief, is this movie made for these times. The relationship that develops between the editors (Carey, Gail Russell) of the town’s two newspapers, The Union and La Luz, suggests a healthily multicultural America that, seventy-five years later, seems still out of reach. ★★★★

*

Passing (dir. Rebecca Hall, 2021). From Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel. Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga star as Irene and Clare, affluent Black women, old school friends, now suddenly reunited. Clare, married to an unabashed racist, has chosen to live her life passing as white, which makes her renewed friendship with Irene and subsequent frequenting of what might be called Black spaces a dangerous matter. All the while, Clare must continue to perform as white, and the toll her double life takes — on her and on others — is the story the movie tells. Brilliant performances from the two principals, luminous cinematography by Eduard Grau. ★★★★ (N)

*

Sly Lives! (aka the Burden of Black Genius) (dir. Questlove, 2025). It’s an immensely joyous and immensely sad story: joyous when it’s about the music of Sylvester Stewart and the Family Stone, sad when it charts the downfall of a musician losing himself to drugs and becoming pathetic in an effort to maintain his appeal to the public. As André 3000 observes, “The same thing that made you great becomes the thing that kills you.” An abundance of archival performance clips and interviews with band members and other musicians — with everyone but Sly himself, who wasn’t capable of an interview — make this documentary necessary viewing for anyone who cares about American music and culture. The great revelation of this documentary for me: Sly Stone was a musical prodigy and played keyboards for and produced countless musicians and groups before forming the Family Stone. ★★★★ (N)

*

Riffraff (dir. Ted Tetzlaff, 1947). It begins with a celebrated scene, silent and unnerving, but the movie doesn’t live up to its start. In Panama, private detective Dan Hammer (Pat O’Brien) is hired to find a missing map, in a routine story with overtones of Casablanca (exotica) and The Maltese Falcon (love and betrayal). Walter Slezak, in a Sydney Greenstreet white suit, is a passable bit of riffraff; Anne Jeffreys as a Brigid O’Shaughnessy stand-in is another; O’Brien alas is the weak link, not convincing as a private eye or love interest. But George E. Diskant’s inventive camera makes the movie worth watching. ★★★ (TCM)

*

Joe Smith, American (dir. Richard Thorpe, 1942). An everyman (Robert Young) is taken off a defense-plant assembly line to work on a secret project, and before he knows it, he’s kidnapped by spies who want to know what he knows. Blindfolded and beaten, he remains remarkably attentive to his surroundings, and after a lucky escape he’s able to lead friends and police to the house where he was held captive. Marsha Hunt is Joe’s wife Mary (an everywoman); Darryl Hickman is their son Johnny (an everykid who adds an interesting subplot about American history and keeping secrets). We can now count ourselves among the small number of people who realize that Joe’s story was the model for the 1959 movie The Big Operator. ★★★ (TCM)

*

Shadowed (dir. John Sturges, 1946). I sometimes wonder what it was like to watch television in the 1950s or early 1960s and see actors whom you vaguely remembered from the movies. Let’s say you were watching a Christmas episode of Lassie and recognized the mysterious Claus-like toy repairman Mr. Nicholson: “Say, isn’t that” — why, yes, It’s Lloyd Corrigan, who stars in this B-movie as an agricultural implement salesman and amateur golfer whose discovery of a corpse on a course puts him and his daughters (Anita Louise, Terry Moore) in peril. A perfectly okay B-movie. And a helpful demonstration of why it’s a good idea to keep agricultural implements around the office. ★★ (YT)

*

Rachel and the Stranger (dir. Norman Foster, 1948). Big Davey (William Holden), a widowed farmer still in mourning, travels to a nearby stockade to get himself a — “wife” isn’t quite the right word; “partner,” certainly not. Rachel (Loretta Young) is an indentured servant, whose contract Big Davey buys, and they marry only for the sake of propriety, so that Rachel can keep house and teach Davey’s son. The icy relationship between husband and wife begins to change when Davey’s old friend Jim (Robert Mitchum) comes to visit. A disturbing, albeit ultimately sentimental, portrait of a woman regarded as a domestic commodity. ★★★ (TCM)

*

Nonnas (dir. Stephen Chbosky, 2025). Based on the true story of Jody Scaravella, or Joe (Vince Vaughn), as the movie calls him, a transit worker who opens a restaurant on Staten Island, Enoteca Maria, to honor his dead mother. What makes the restaurant different: Joe hires older Italian-American women, nonnas, or grandmas, to do the cooking. I liked the chance to see Lorraine Bracco, Susan Sarandon, Talia Shire, and Brenda Vaccaro, all women of, as they say, a certain age, front and center in funny and poignant performances. But this movie makes the average Hallmark movie feel like film noir — there’s way too much sugar in the sauce. ★★★ (N)

*

The Strip (dir. László Kardos, 1951). We didn’t realize that we had seen it before until a few minutes in. It’s a noir with music, with Mickey Rooney as a drummer accused of murder, telling his story in a movie-long flashback with many glimpses of real-world Los Angeles nightspots. The music is the reason to watch: it’s mostly by Louis Armstrong and three of his All-Stars: Jack Teagarden, Barney Bigard, and Earl Hines, with Rooney stepping in to serve as their loud, tasteless drummer. William Demarest plays a kindly nightclub owner and sometime-pianist; Sally Forrest, a cigarette girl/dancer; and James Craig, a mustachioed mob boss who looks like he stepped out of Jack Elrod’s Mark Trail. ★★★ (TCM)

*

Deadline — U.S.A. (dir. Richard Brooks, 1952). As the days to its sale run down, a great daily paper, The Day, doggedly investigates a mobster (Martin Gabel) and his likely involvement in the death of a young woman. It’s a terrific newspaper movie, with a premise that recalls The Naked City and a picture of a newsroom that looks forward to Lou Grant (Nancy Marchand, who played the owner of the TV show’s newspaper, seems to be the reincarnation of The Day’s owner, Margaret Garrison (Ethel Barrymore). As The Day’s editor, Humphrey Bogart seems stagey, and he has little chemistry with the ex-wife he’s still pursuing (Kim Hunter) or his reporters, who include Jim Backus, Ed Begley, and Paul Stewart, all of whom wear fedoras indoors. Best scene: the walkway above the printing presses. ★★★ (TCM)

Related reading
All OCA “twelve movies” posts (Pinboard)

Six friends

[Click for a much larger view.]

I took this photograph last week and forgot about it. Look closely and you’ll see four pairs of eyes, one eye from a figure caught in profile, one figure with back turned away from the camera, and some random lights across the way. Deer sometimes sleep in our backyard. We think that they think that it’s a friendly place, with reasonable rates.

Related reading
Mark Trail explains eyeshine : One more deer

St. Patrick’s Day in the comics

In ones that I read anyway: The Far Side is all green and Irish. Hi and Lois is all alcohol and Lucky Charms. (So tasteful.) Mark Trail is all four-leaf clovers. Happy Saint Patrick’s Day.

[The name Leddy is Irish.]

“Fellows”

[Zits, October 21, 2020.]

As D’ijon explained in yesterday’s Zits, Pierce is “experimenting with conformity.” But it’s not just his appearance that’s changed. Look at his speech balloon: he’s sounding like the old Mark Trail. And from Monday’s strip:


[Zits, October 19, 2020. Click either image for a larger view.]

I have to think Pierce’s whom is meant for laughs. Notice also his wristwatch.

Related reading
A handful of Zits posts

“Red meets black, you’re okay, Jack”

[Mark Trail, October 12, 2020. Click for a larger view.]

Mark Trail has a new artist. Her name is Jules Rivera. She calls herself Mark Trail’s new dad. Here’s an article about the change.

Yes, that’s a camcorder, not a phone, in Cherry Trail’s hands, which I think must be a joke at the expense of the early aughts.

*

And now I’m surprised to see that news of the switch made The New York Times in September.

Related reading
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The return of the Jack Elrod ball

Today’s Mark Trail marks the return of the Jack Elrod ball. James Allen and the James Allen ball are gone, and the strip is now, perhaps temporarily, in reruns by Allen’s late predecessor (d. 2016). Allen’s explanation: “I’m tired and they wanted a new direction.” But a more plausible explanation might be found by following that link and reading the comments, one of which notes that Allen recently tweeted a crude, hateful remark about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from the account @themarktrail, which now shows no tweets. Allen also appears to have modeled a recent Trail character who came to a gruesome end on a Twitter critic of the strip. Thin-skinned much?

Related reading
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Lost Forest as Calverton

[Mark Trail, June 8, 2020. Click for a larger view.]

What, like some incredible journey? Mark, you must be kidding.

It has to be said: this storyline, with Andy the dog hopping into the back of a truck and going on a long journey, appears to be Lassie-inspired. It’s straight from the three-episode 1962 Lassie story “The Odyssey.”

A warning: if you ever happen to be teaching Homer, and you decide to show the last couple of minutes of the third episode to your class, someone will cry. Don’t ask me how I know.

Related reading
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[What kind of human addresses a small group of family members as “any of you”? More natural: “Anyone ever heard,” &c.]

Mark, huh?

 
[Mark Trail, May 21 and January 11, 2020. Click for larger Trails.]

I saved “Huh?” thinking it might come in handy. And it has.

For weeks now the artwork in Mark Trail has been a bit odd. That really is new Mark on the left. It’s all very “Huh?”

Related reading
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How to improve writing (no. 87)

  
[Mark Trail, May 12, 2020. Original panel, left, and two revisions.]

In today’s Mark Trail, some dialogue in need of improvement. The gist of things: The Crowley family and Mark are on a camping trip for “troubled children.” Eric is the Crowleys’ son. The Crowleys seem to be leaning toward adopting Kevin, a young orphan on the trip. Eric is jealous, and Kevin knows it. Kevin runs off from camp with Mark Trail’s adopted son Rusty; everyone searches for them; a forest fire happens; and Kevin saves the day by warning Mrs. Crowley and Eric that a tree is going to fall on them. This story has taken months to develop.

One problem in the original panel above: Kevin didn’t save three (or more) people — only two. Mrs. Crowley has exaggerated. A second problem: “our and Eric’s lives” is some mighty awkward syntax. My first revision aims for accurate reporting and decent syntax. My second revision aims for more schmaltz: in saving Mrs. Crowley and Eric, Kevin has indeed saved “all of us” — in other words, the whole Crowley family, including Eric. Formerly rotten Eric, I hope.

Related reading
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[This post is no. 87 in a series, dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

Eyeshine

[Mark Trail, February 23, 2020.]

Last week I went out after dark to toss coffee grounds and vegetable peelings into the compost bin at the edge of our backyard. It’s a long walk. I stopped in my tracks when my flashlight showed me the yellow-green glow of five or six pairs of deer eyes.

Now I understand what I was seeing. Today’s Mark Trail gives a good explanation of eyeshine. Thanks, Mark.

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Jack Elrod coloring books

Matthew Schmeer let me know of two items available as PDFs from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service: Fish, Wildlife and People: A Mark Trail Coloring Book (1987) and Wetlands Coloring Book (1999). Both are by Jack Elrod, who succeeded Ed Dodd as the artist and writer of Mark Trail. Elrod clearly brought his best stuff to the pages of these coloring books.

Thanks, Matthew.

Related reading
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[The USFWS doesn’t identify Elrod as the author of Wetlands Coloring Book, but the WorldCat does.]

Meet Dr. Camel

[Mark Trail, September 23, 2019.]

I am avoiding all jokes about doctors and Camels. This Dr. Camel is a cryptozoologist, searching for proof that Yetis exist. My interest is in his handshake, which suggests to me that Dr. Camel might be something of a crypto-creature himself. Do you see the problem?


[Mark Trail, revised by me, September 23, 2019.]

Note to colorist: Proofread. Avoid carless errors.

I improved Mark Trail’s sleeve with the free Mac app Seashore. I added a left margin to make this moment look like a panel unto itself.

Related reading
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[Carless is on purpose, a joke I used to add to pages describing essay assignments.]

Things I learned on my summer vacation

“I have two wolves in my heart. One is loving, and one is vicious, and they’re at war with each other. The grandchild is saying, Which is going to win? And the grandparent is saying, The one I feed.” [Source.]

*

Rihanna has a fashion line.

*

“Meat Detour Ahead.”

*

“Ponding Water Possible.”

*

They don’t make children’s wagons they way they used to. Today’s wagons have creature comforts.

*

Gravity Hill, Pennsylvania: “Cars roll uphill and water flows the wrong way.” Uh-huh.

*

“New England is only in New England.”

*

Garden State Plaza in Paramus, New Jersey, is at some points the cross-country twin of the Westfield Topanga mall in Canoga Park, California. Compare the mall entrances alongside GSP’s Ruby Tuesday and WT’s Cheesecake Factory. What explains this magic? Westfield.

*

My mom and I always choose crab cakes. But I knew that already. (Legal Sea Foods FTW.)

*

Chock Full o’Nuts was—once again—on sale at Shop-Rite. Twelve cans to bring back to a world devoid o’Nuts.

*

In the Port Authority Bus Terminal, I did not learn what the man with his midsection pressed to the Dyson hand dryer was doing. Nor did I want to.

*

A glance at Joan Miró’s object assemblages — Object, for instance — is enough to see that Miró must have influenced Joseph Cornell.

*

So many of the paintings at MoMA appear to have dated in ways that far older works have not. I thought of what Emerson said of Plato: “This perpetual modernness is the measure of merit, in every work of art.” Some modern art is no longer so modern. Miró is.

*

The motion-activated Dyson Airblades in MoMA’s men’s bathrooms are a mess. Water comes from a middle spout. To the right and left, hand dryers. Position your wet hand the wrong way and the dryer sprays water droplets up toward your arm and face. Move your hand too far to the right while drying and a motion-activated soap dispenser kicks in. I was quick enough to dodge the soap that would have dropped onto my shirtsleeve. How can a museum with an exhibit of objects that embody good design have such lousy fixtures in its men’s bathrooms? Elaine reported no such fixtures in the women’s bathrooms.

*

One set of MoMA bathrooms adds “Self-Identified” to the placards MEN and WOMEN.

*

There’s a guard at the Museum of Modern Art who sharpens his pencil with a handheld sharpener while standing guard.

*

It’s possible in MoMA to have a long, wide-ranging, exceptionally pleasant conversation, about everything from rents to design to the influence of weather on museum attendance, with — was he a docent or a guard? I don’t want to get anyone in trouble, so that’s all I’ll say.

*

From 1943 to 1947, the Council on Books in Wartime produced Armed Forces Editions, inexpensive paperbacks for distribution to the troops. Among the titles: Great Poems from Chaucer to Whitman (ed. Louis Untermeyer) and A Wartime Whitman (ed. William A. Aiken). In other words, Whitman was a quintessential American poet.

*

The Marcal Paper factory in Elmwood Park, New Jersey, burned to the ground earlier this year. The factory’s rooftop sign was a beautiful sight from Route 80.

*

American Heroes Smokehouse is a barbecue restaurant with a great backstory. And great food. I wrote a review and said that we ate like happy maniacs. Elaine wrote a review, without reading mine, and said that we ate like raving lunatics. Thank you, Lu and Jim.

*


[Mark Trail, May 14, 2019.]

Not me.

*

Phebe’s Tavern and Grill has been in business on the Bowery since 1968, before the days of salmon burgers and quinoa salads. The building dates to 1920. Good food, modest prices, the plain wooden floor of an old establishment.

*

The Bowery is quite different from my mental image of it, formed from Weegee photographs and the great movie On the Bowery (dir. Lionel Rogosin, 1956). In front of the Bowery Mission, three doddering men looked woefully out of place.

*

I was happy to see Joe Brainard’s work at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery, but found little difference between seeing the drawings, paintings, and collages themselves and seeing reproductions in books. Is that good, or bad? Beats me. But I love the wit, cheer, and modesty of Brainard’s work.


[Joe Brainard, 30 Squares. 1975. 13 1/2″ × 10 1/2″. Photograph by Michael Leddy. Click for a larger view.]

*

What I don’t love: hearing up close the transformation of art into dollars. “Thirty”? That means $30,000. Do those who have come to a gallery only to look typically feel invisible?

*

Route 9 is a Massachusetts version of New Jersey’s Route 46.

*

J&M Diner in Framingham, Massachusetts, is diner heaven. Breakfast food only, served for breakfast and lunch. I chose bacon and eggs. Elaine chose the sweet potato hash. We both chose well.

*

Ben is a wonderful host. But I knew that already.


*

Ben’s work is more interesting than I knew.

*

The Frank Pepe’s in Chestnut Hill is a superior Frank Pepe’s. (Quality varies greatly from location to location.) The oven at Frank Pepe’s is about the only use of coal I will defend. White clam, quattro formaggi, and spinach, mushroom, and gorgonzola: bliss.

*

Naco Taco is a food truck that sits all day, seven days a week, on Boston’s Newbury Street. A torta ahogada cut into four pieces makes a nice little prelude to dinner.

*

Glen Baxter has been translated into Spanish: Casi todo Baxter: Nuevas y escogidas ocurrencias.

*

A thoughtful library touch, posted in the bathrooms: a page of call numbers for “sensitive subjects.” “We’re always here to help,” says the page, “but sometimes it’s hard to ask. We hope this sign will help you find what you need.” Yes, we go to the library while on vacation.

*

Why did Elaine and I never think of going to Sol Azteca? Guacamole, nopalitos (cactus), mole poblano, puerco en adobo, and chicken tostadas.

*

Triumphalism aside, the monologue “Growing Up Italian” is startling in its accuracy. Fig tree: my mom recalls one. “Watching the house”: that was my grandparents’ thing. The holiday menu, ending with fruit and nuts: exactly. We heard this unidentified recording on Festa Italiana, from Gannon University’s WERG FM.

*

Somewhere in Ohio lives a Bentley owner with the license plate G POUPON.

*

Talia knows the cadences of the alphabet song. Bah bah, bah bah, bah bah bah.

*

2261.8 miles : 49.7 MPG (lots of wind) : 53 MPH.

More things I learned on my summer vacation
2018 : 2017 : 2016 : 2015 : 2014 : 2013 : 2012 : 2011 : 2010 : 2009 : 2008 : 2007 : 2006

No rocks

[Mark Trail, March 19, 2019.]

Doc Davis, Cherry Davis Trail’s father, Mark Trail’s father-in-law, is telling a between-Mark-Trail-adventures story. I believe it’s what they call an interpolated tale. Or is it interminable?

Doc, if you were hoping to find some rocks, you’re in the wrong comic strip.



Related reading
All OCA Mark Trail posts (Pinboard) : “Some rocks” posts

“FFWWOOOOSSSHHH”

[Mark Trail, February 19, 2019.]

On Harbour Island in the Bahamas, a man named Dirty is destroying a mannequin’s head with a flamethrower: “Man! This flamethrower is a blast!” The name, the weapon, the witless violence: might this man be a villain? If so, Mark will promptly be dispatching him, eight or nine months from now.

If you want to break the fourth wall, you must leave no wall behind. Olivia Jaimes can show you how it’s done. Also, don’t leave parts of clouds and infernos blank. “FFWWOOOOSSSHHH” must be comics-speak for “Dammit, I forgot to proofread.”

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All OCA Mark Trail posts (Pinboard) : BRATTATTATAT : KRAKABLAM : MEME : THIP, THUP, THK, SHUK : WHOOAA

Meta Trail

[Mark Trail, February 13, 2019.]

Rusty has been telling the fam about his new friend Mara’s hobbies: ”She likes reading the comics in her newspaper back home!” Mark too! Everyone’s meta these days, or trying to be.

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“Whooaa . . .”

[Mark Trail, January 10, 2018.]

In 2014, “Whooa!” appeared. The exclamation resurfaced in 2017: “Whooa!” And now a variation, more hesitant, uncertain: “Whooaa . . .” But you can bet there’ll be nothing hesitant or uncertain about Mark Trail’s punches. They will be decisive.

This storyline, which seems to be nearing its end, began on April 26, 2018, with the family Trail heading off on a vacation: “Boy! This is one big airport!” And one long storyline. Whooaa.

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Mark Trail’s side-eye

[Mark Trail, November 27, 2018. Click for a larger view.]

I would like to imagine that in the interstice, Mark has dashed in front of the other guy, the better to give him the old side-eye. But what’s “strange” here? That someone has an education? And went away from “the jungle,” to a school, to get it? Does Mark believe in (so-called) distance learning for place-bound students?

And speaking of education: if Mark were a little better educated, he might spell José with an acute accent. And the other guy might speak a little less clumsily: “Well, now that you mention it, he does seem highly educated for someone who claims to have grown up around the jungle. But I think he said he went away to school somewhere!”

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[“The other guy”: aka What’s-his-face, aka “Professor Carter.” Wait, he’s a professor? I know that not everyone spells José with an accent. But in the work of an Anglo cartoonist, its absence looks like a mistake.]

Rusty, recycled

 
 
[Mark Trail, October 26, 27, 29, 30, 2018. Click any image for a larger view.]

Rusty Trail is Mark and Cherry’s son. Like his parents and everyone else in the Mark Trail world, he can be cut and pasted. And like a witness facing jail time, he can be flipped. But four strips in a row?

The effort here reminds me of the crudest cartoon animation, the kind in which only eyebrows and mouths move. The lightning bolts in Rusty’s hair might change shape, his teeth might whiten, his eyes might get bluer, but he’s the same Rusty, recycled. The surest way to tell that these four images are the same image, lightly revised: look to the ear.

James Allen/Semaj Nella, like his predecessor Jack Elrod, is a dedicated recycler. Evidence: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

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[My row excludes Sunday, which always drops the tedious storyline of the moment for a nature lesson.]