Forty

[Drawing by me. Click for a larger view.]

Elaine and I were married forty years ago today. Our son Ben recently told us that he thinks of me as forty and Elaine as thirty-five. Which would mean that when we married, I was a newborn — zero. And Elaine was negative five.

Happy anniversary, Elaine, at all ages.

[I made this drawing with an Apple Pencil and and iPad last year. I’ve altered it to remove my glasses. I’m still not sure how to draw myself minus glasses.]

The New Grown-Ups: “Taxman Salamander”

With AI-generated lyrics!

Related posts
“Cumberland Gap” : “My Heart’s Own Love” : “The Devil’s Nine Questions” : “William Blake’s Dead” : “Lonesome Pine” : “Tom Paine’s Bones” : “You Were on My Mind This Morning” : “The Hills of Isle au Haut” : “Treehopper” : “I’d Jump the Mississippi” : “What Will Become of Me” : “Early” : “When I Stop Dreaming” : The New Grown-Ups at Bandcamp

Animal house

[107 Flatbush Avenue, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Walk down Flatbush Avenue from (what I’ve dubbed) the Leaning Tower of Brooklyn, and you woul have found The House of Pets, aka Altman’s Long Island Bird Store.

I’ll let this ad speak (at length) for itself:

[Brooklyn Times-Union, May 29, 1933.]

Do click for a larger view of the tax photograph for many choice details. The capped fellows looking at the window make me think Sam (Tom D’Andrea), the cabdriver in Dark Passage (dir. Delmar Daves, 1947) who wants to buy a pair of goldfish for his room: “It adds class to the joint.” Though these guys seem to be contemplating birds. Or maybe puppies. Different scenes attracted crowds at other times:

[“Pig-Tailed Monkey Wrecks Pet Store in Berserk Spell.” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, January 23, 1930.]

[“Snake, Loose in Pet Shop, Crawls into Window with Pups, Kittens.” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 29, 1941. Click for a larger view.]

*

October 1: A reader found evidence of further mayhem. Thanks, reader.

[Daily News, May 13, 1951.]

Related reading
More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard)

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by Stella Zawistowski. I started with 13-D, seven letters, “Ceres’ Greek analog” and began shopping around. It was a tough puzzle.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

2-D, six letters, “Sequenced.” CUEDUP? Nope.

9-D, eight letters, “Bostonian’s rubber bands.” Never heard of the term, but I’m assured that it’s real. When I lived in Boston, I used binder clips, paper clips, and staples to keep things together.

12-D, seven letters, “Term in environmental law.” I was tempted to guess early on but didn’t. Coming next to 13-D, my guess would have helped a lot.

14-A, ten letters, “Certain baker’s dozen.” I’m in.

17-A, ten letters, “Digressive.” The answer needs to be more in the news.

36-D, seven letters, “Ironmonger?” Groan.

37-D, seven letters, “Thundering.” Fun with the parts of speech.

46-A, five letters, “Americas’ ‘mother culture.’” I don’t think I’ve ever seen the answer in a crossword.

47-A, four letters, “Huron, Ohio’s county (no kidding!).” In other words, the Ohio county that the city of Huron is in. Wacky geography.

48-D, five letters, “Where Beowulf begins.” Oddly and some might say ridiculously specific.

49-A, four letters, “Pedal pusher’s apparatus.” I thought I was reading a tricky clue about the piano, but I wasn’t.

55-A, ten letters, “Was all over the place.” A wild and crazy clue.

56-D, three letters, “Unheard howl.” Clever.

My favorite in this puzzle: 18-A, four letters, “Gym ball.”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Watch your wallet

Jonathan Last and Mary Trump offer commentary on Donald Trump’s latest grift.

Last’s estimate of the cost of producing the $499 Trump watch: $60. The $100,000 watch: $20,000.

Banky’s ghost

[Sidney James as Banky’s ghost. From Joe MacBeth (dir. Ken Hughes, 1955).]

The movie is available to watch at the usual place for out-of-the-way movies.

The New Grown-Ups: “When I Stop Dreaming”

Related posts
“Cumberland Gap” : “My Heart’s Own Love” : “The Devil’s Nine Questions” : “William Blake’s Dead” : “Lonesome Pine” : “Tom Paine’s Bones” : “You Were on My Mind This Morning” : “The Hills of Isle au Haut” : “Treehopper” : “I’d Jump the Mississippi” : “What Will Become of Me” : “Early” : The New Grown-Ups at Bandcamp

Eric Adams, defending himself

Donald Trump, in one variation on a theme: “They are coming after me because I am fighting for you.”

I hear that same narcissism in Eric Adams’s words: “I always knew that if I stood my ground for all of you, that I would be a target, and a target I became.” Here’s a man who in 2023 proclaimed,

“I am the symbol of Black manhood in the city, in this country, and what it represents. I’m the mayor of the most powerful city on the globe, and people need to recognize that.”

And now, charged with multiple serious crimes, he’s taking up the Donald Trump cry of victimhood.

The Trump/Adams defense makes me wonder: can narcissistic injury be converted into narcissistic supply?

Criterion Channel, 20% off

Now through Monday, September 30: the Criterion Channel is offering 20% off new annual subscriptions. Use the code FALL20.

The Criterion Channel launched on April 8, 2019. I’ve been a subscriber since the get-go. If every other streaming service in the world were to disappear, I could be happy with the Criterion Channel alone.

Four Corners (fun)

🟡🔵🔵🔵
🔵🔵🔵🔵

🔵🔵🔵🟡
🔵🔵🔵🔵

🔵🔵🔵🔵
🟡🔵🔵🔵

🔵🔵🔵🔵
🔵🔵🔵🟡

If you share your Strands results as a foursome, trying for Four Corners adds an element of tension to the play. The corners need not be in order. Good luck to the person who ends up with the challenge of getting Corner No. 1.

I will cite Annie Black, the bookstore owner (Rebecca Pidgeon) in State and Main (dir. David Mamet, 2000): “If you don’t make it yourself, it ain’t fun — it’s entertainment.”

The New Grown-Ups: “Early”

Related posts
“Cumberland Gap” : “My Heart’s Own Love” : “The Devil’s Nine Questions” : “William Blake’s Dead” : “Lonesome Pine” : “Tom Paine’s Bones” : “You Were on My Mind This Morning” : “The Hills of Isle au Haut” : “Treehopper” : “I’d Jump the Mississippi” : “What Will Become of Me” : The New Grown-Ups at Bandcamp

Figuring out how to be yourself

Nick Lowe, interviewed on the PBS News Hour last night:

“Johnny Cash once said to me, incredibly disappointingly, I thought at the time, ‘Nick, what you have got to do is figure out how to be yourself.’

“I didn’t really know what he meant. I thought, ‘Is that the best you can do, John?’ But actually, now I do. Because when you’re young, you’re trying to sort of cop an act, you’re trying to be — always trying to be somebody that you’re not. And you’ve got to sort of welcome in the things that you don’t really like about yourself, you know, but welcome it in. Because if you can figure out how to be yourself, it makes things so much easier.”

A related post
W.H. Auden on discovering who we are (With special guest Mr. Peabody) : Peter Drucker on where one belongs (With special guest Norman Spencer)

[My transcription. I had “what you ought to do,” but now I think “what you have got to do,” spoken very quickly, is right.]

The New Grown-Ups: “What Will Become of Me”

Related posts
“Cumberland Gap” : “My Heart’s Own Love” : “The Devil’s Nine Questions” : “William Blake’s Dead” : “Lonesome Pine” : “Tom Paine’s Bones” : “You Were on My Mind This Morning” : “The Hills of Isle au Haut” : “Treehopper” : “I’d Jump the Mississippi” : The New Grown-Ups at Bandcamp

The New Grown-Ups: “I’d Jump the Mississippi”

Am I going to post every tune from their festival appearance? So it would seem.

Related posts
“Cumberland Gap” : “My Heart’s Own Love” : “The Devil’s Nine Questions” : “William Blake’s Dead” : “Lonesome Pine” : “Tom Paine’s Bones” : “You Were on My Mind This Morning” : “The Hills of Isle au Haut” : “Treehopper” : The New Grown-Ups at Bandcamp

New directions in signage

As seen on I-57:

DONT BE A TOSSER

USE A

TRASH CAN

Does someone at the Department of Transportation know British slang? Here’s one of those moments when it’s difficult to decide if someone is intending to make a joke — i.e., to get away with something.

SINATRA, not a word

[Strands, September 21, 2024.]

Before I forget: a moment from yesterday’s Strands. I think the constructor must have been having fun in planting this Frank. His name — SINATR — almost appears a second time. Or maybe I’m just seeing things. But I see no sign of Cole Porter.

Here’s a Sinatra version of the song.

Twelve movies

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

Alabama Snake (dir. Theo Love, 2020). A true-crime saga that creeps along at a snail’s, not snake’s, pace. Long story short: in 1991, a preacher from the Pentecostal Holiness tradition of “signs following” — signs that include handling poisonous snakes and drinking strychnine — was charged with attempting to murder his wife by snakebite. This documentary could do much more to give greater context for the history of these religious traditions — who, what, when, where. During one lull in the story, I began reciting William Carlos Williams: “The pure products of America / go crazy.” ★★ (M)

[Holy Ghost People would be a better introduction to this world.]

*

F for Fake (dir. Orson Welles, Gary Graver, Oja Kodar, 1973). Fraudsters on parade: the art fraudster Elmyr de Hory and the literary hoaxer Clifford Irving (who wrote a biography of de Hory), both found among the beautiful people of Ibiza. I liked seeing Joseph Cotten in a brief appearance, but the overall ethos — forgery and fraud as charming magic tricks — leaves me cold. This documentary is a bit of a shambles, or a real mish-mash, as my dad would have called it. A ridiculous amount of time goes to looking at Oja Kodar, Welles’s lover at the time, who even gets a directing credit. ★★ (CC)

*

‌ Almost True: The Noble Art of Forgery (dir. Knut W. Jorfald, 1997). A short documentary about de Hory, who made money not by copying originals but by creating drawings and paintings to be sold as Matisses, Modiglianis, Picassos. His life, recounted here by Clifford Irving, among others, is clouded in mystery, the principal one being how he acquired the technique to make persuasive fakes. I think that every documentary I’ve seen about visual art in recent years has been about the conversion of art into money — sigh. ★★★ (CC)

[See also Brillo Box (3¢ off) and Made You Look: A True Story About Fake Art.]

*

Deported (dir. Robert Siodmak, 1950). Jeff Chandler plays “Vic Smith,” or Vittorio Sparducci, an American gangster deported to Italy. He left a hundred thousand dollars behind in the States, and when he’s not being taken in by one woman (Marina Berti) or wooing another (Märta Torén), he’s working out a scheme to get the money. There’s not much of Italy (where the movie was filmed) on view, and a final showdown in a warehouse does little to redeem the proceedings. Not Robert Siodmak’s finest ninety minutes. ★★ (YT)

*

The Circus (dir. Charlie Chaplin, 1928). Chaplin as a tramp, the tramp, who flees the law, ends up in a circus, works there as a handyman, and, finally, becomes the star of the show — though not forever. As Jan Brady might say, Chaplin, Chaplin, Chaplin: Chaplin as an automaton, Chaplin in a funhouse room of mirrors (an inspiration for The Lady from Shanghai ), Chaplin in a lion’s cage, Chaplin on the highwire, where is tormented by monkeys. With Merna Kennedy as a circus ingenue and Harry Crocker as an aerialist. In 1969 Chaplin rereleased the movie with a new musical score and his own latter-day vocal rendition of “Swing Little Girl” playing over the opening credits. ★★★★ (CC)

*

State and Main (dir. David Mamet, 2000). Watching again with friends, I better appreciated how carefully constructed this movie is, with countless elements whose significance only comes through on a second viewing. And I appreciated once again, though no better, what a great actor Philip Seymour Hoffman was. For fans only: a website, now archived, about The Old Mill, the movie within the movie. Go Huskies! ★★★★ (CC)

*

Shadows (dir. John Cassavetes, 1959). Love and friendship among hipsters in New York City. I know that I’m supposed to like the movie, but, well, you see, uhm, no. The acting is either clumsy or overblown (and not improv, though the credits say it is) and the plot is beyond thin. To me, the movie’s value is documentary: a chance to hear Shafi Hadi and Charles Mingus and to see the city streets as they looked in the late 1950s. ★★ (CC)

*

Doubt (dir. John Patrick Shanley, 2008). Four people in conflict: an authoritarian nun, Sister Aloysius Brauvier (Meryl Streep); a deeply inward, kindly priest, Father Brendan Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman); a young but not too perky nun, Sister James (Amy Adams); and a student’s mother, Mrs. Miller (Viola Davis). I don’t want to reveal too much: suffice it to say that an accusation is made. How it’s treated might surprise you. And the ending, which must have been a shocker on the stage, is a shocker on the screen too. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Walk Softly, Stranger (dir. Robert Stevenson, 1950). Shelved by Howard Hughes, and then brought out to capitalize on the success of The Third Man. Joseph Cotten is a ne’er-do-well who enters into the life of a small town, boarding with an elderly widow (Spring Byington) and wooing the paraplegic daughter of a shoe manufacturer. But in comes a figure from Hale’s past (Paul Stewart), and things begin to go awry. As for an ending, The Third Man got it right. ★★★ (TCM)

*

Fly by Night (dir. Robert Siodmak, 1942). Robert Siodmak’s second American movie, and a definite obscurity, something of a cross between The 39 Steps and a screwball comedy. A young doctor (Richard Carlson) is the Hitchcockian wrong man, accused of murdering an asylum escapee who wasn’t crazy and was — in fact — the prisoner of a Nazi spy ring seeking the secret plans for G-32. The doctor lams it with a young sketch artist (Nancy Kelly) who becomes an instantly trusting sidekick. I’d like to see a better print of this movie, which takes place mostly at night and deserves better-looking darkness. ★★★ (YT)

*

The Man Who Watched Trains Go By (dir. Harold French, 1952). “He’s got no future, and he doesn’t seem to have had much of a past”: that’s Kees Popinga (Claude Rains), for eighteen years the staid chief clerk in a Dutch trading company whose owner (Herbert Lom) is now suspected of funny stuff with company funds. An unexpected turn of events leave Popinga with a suitcase full of the boss’s money, and with it, he travels to Paris, where he meets and becomes smitten with his boss’s lover, Michele Rozier (Märta Torén). Meanwhlle, he’s being pursued by a French police inspector (Marius Goring). Technicolor noir, from a novel by George Simenon. ★★★ (T)

*

Joe MacBeth (dir. Ken Hughes, 1955). “Don’t let the Duke push you around so much, Joe”: Paul Douglas is Joe MacBeth, a mobster whose wife Lily (Ruth Roman) pushes him to climb higher and higher in the hierarchy by any (bloody) means necessary. But success is short-lived, and it comes to an end in a darkened mansion where Joe has taken, as they say, to the mattresses. Best scenes: the chestnut-vendor/fortune teller (Minerva Pious) standing in for Shakespeare’s witches, the appearance of Banky’s ghost (Sidney James), and the grim ending. An ingenious translation of the Shake into gangsterese. ★★★★ (YT)

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

The New Grown-Ups: “Treehopper”

By now The New Grown-Ups need no introduction. The tune is by our son, Ben Leddy.

Related posts
“Cumberland Gap” : “My Heart’s Own Love” : “The Devil’s Nine Questions” : “William Blake’s Dead” : “Lonesome Pine” : “Tom Paine’s Bones” : “You Were on My Mind This Morning” : “The Hills of Isle au Haut” : The New Grown-Ups at Bandcamp

Benny Golson (1929–2024)

The tenor saxophonist and composer Benny Golson has died at the age of ninety-five. Among his compositions: “Along Came Betty” and “I Remember Clifford.” The Washington Post has an obituary.

The Leaning Tower of Brooklyn

[113-115 Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Some serious density of signage. The camera angle makes this corner look like the Leaning Tower of Brooklyn, but in truth it’s the tip of an triangle bounded by Flatbush Avenue (to the left), Ashland Place (to the right), and Lafayette Avenue (out of sight).

Everything in that triangle, along with the El, is gone, and there’s now an Apple Store on the corner. But the Brooklyn Academy of Music is still going, on Ashland Place, Fulton Street, and Lafayette Avenue. Elaine and I saw Twyla Tharp Dance perform at BAM in 1984. And I said hello to André Gregory in the lobby.

Related reading
More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard)

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumperis by “Lester Ruff,” the puzzle’s editor, Stan Newman, composing under a pen name that signals an easier (less rough) puzzle. But this one was rough, and not in a way that sparked joy. Too much trivia: 18-A, six letters, “Blazing Saddles pol potrayer.” 12-D, nine letters, “Member of the Space Jam Tune Squad.” 57-A, eight letters, “Mel Gibson’s boss in What Women Want.” I have nothing against older movies (these are from 1974, 1996, and 2000), and the answers are gettable from crosses, but these clues tend to turn the puzzle into Trivia Night. Space Jam : really?

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

1-D, five letters, “Dalai Lama’s ‘best meditation.’” I suspect that this answer is better attributed to the Internet than to the Dalai Lama. I can find no genuine source.

6-D, six letters, “Top drawer.” Groan.

20-A, three letters, “Reduced-by-two ‘up to.’” Made me think of sale prices. Up to 50% off?

24-D, seven letters, “Yonder, to some New Yawkers.” Well, maybe.

28-D, ten letters, “Post office clerk’s call.” I’ve never heard it in a post office.

33-A, thirteen letters, “It takes your breath away.” I started here, thinking that the answer had to be STRANGULATION. (How cheerful.) Realizing that I had to abandon that guess did a lot to make the puzzle solvable.

38-A, three letters, “a.m. or p.m.” Never heard of it.

45-A, six letters, “Passes or portrays.” Nice to think about the multiple meanings of the answer.

52-A, three letters, “Arrive in.” I think at would make for a more reasonable clue.

My favorite in this puzzle: 33-D, eight letters, “NASDAQ two-time member.”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

The New Grown-ups: “The Hills of Isle au Haut”

“Dad, you don’t have to post all of these.”

Yeah, I do.

Related posts
“Cumberland Gap” : “My Heart’s Own Love” : “The Devil’s Nine Questions” : “William Blake’s Dead” : “Lonesome Pine” : “Tom Paine’s Bones” : “You Were on My Mind This Morning” : The New Grown-Ups at Bandcamp

Chicago-style changes

From The Washington Post: “Nine important changes to The Chicago Manual of Style — and why they matter.”

I have the now-outdated seventeenth edition, and I think I just saved $75 by reading this article.

The change I find most interesting: Chicago-style now requires a capital letter for a complete sentence following a colon. No, thanks. I think Garner’s Modern English Usage has it right:

Although the uppercase convention is a signpost to the reader that a complete sentence is ahead, that signpost generally isn’t needed.

As GMEU suggests, a lowercase letter “more closely ties the two clauses together.” But when a colon introduces several sentences, each should begin with a capital. In that case, the capital is a useful signpost.

Related reading
All OCA Chicago Manual of Sryle posts : punctuation posts (Pinboard)

[This post replaces a nearly identical one with a godawful typo in the title.]

Prison for punctuation

From NPR:

An Iranian writer and activist has been sentenced to 12 years in prison after replying with a single dot, or period, in response to a post on the social platform X by Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Hossein Shanbehzadeh, a longtime critic of Iran’s leadership, was active on social media, supporting political prisoners and the removal of mandatory headscarves for women.

Shanbehzadeh was arrested shortly after posting his response, which received many more likes than Khamenei’s tweet. The sentence:

Five years for alleged pro-Israel propaganda activity, four years for insulting Islamic sanctities, two years for spreading lies online and an additional year for anti-regime propaganda.

Despots and wanna-be despots everywhere hate being mocked, don’t they?

Saluting Face emoji

I don’t know what I was looking for when I found the Saluting Face emoji. (I think that should be Saluting Hand, or Person, no?) This emoji comes in variety of designs, at least two of which show only a half-face to make more room for the hand.

  [Apple and Twitter/X. Click either image for a larger view.]

That Twitter/X hand — I knew right away who/what I was seeing:

  [Twitter/X, Sluggo. Click either image for a larger view.]

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

The New Grown-Ups: “You Were on My Mind This Morning”

Another one from The New Grown-Ups. Our son Ben Leddy is on mandolin.

Related posts
“Cumberland Gap” : “My Heart’s Own Love” : “The Devil’s Nine Questions” : “William Blake’s Dead” : “Lonesome Pine” : “Tom Paine’s Bones” : The New Grown-Ups at Bandcamp

In the windmills of his mind

Far longer and far more astonishing than the childcare answer is the answer to this question: “How are you going to bring down the cost of food and groceries?” Eight minutes of this ’n’ that.

The New Grown-Ups: “Tom Paine’s Bones”

Our son Ben Leddy is front and center for this one.

Related posts
“Cumberland Gap” : “My Heart’s Own Love” : “The Devil’s Nine Questions” : “William Blake’s Dead” : “Lonesome Pine” : The New Grown-Ups at Bandcamp

Stopping the Steal

A helpful aid to memory: the new documentary Stopping the Steal (dir. Dan Reed, 2024), about the Republican officials who refused to go along with Donald Trump’s depraved schemes.

But I wish those interviewed had been asked about what they’re going to do in the upcoming election.

Robert Reich has a list

An aid to memory, in the form of a short video from Robert Reich: “The 10 Worst Things About the Trump Presidency.”

Just ten? Just watch.

The New Grown-Ups: “Lonesome Pine”

Our son Ben Leddy is a member of The New Grown-Ups, who just took first in a new-band showcase at the Thomas Point Beach Bluegrass Festival in Brunswick, Maine. That’s a sample above.

Related posts
“Cumberland Gap” : “My Heart’s Own Love” : “The Devil’s Nine Questions” : “William Blake’s Dead” : The New Grown-Ups at Bandcamp

The New Grown-Ups: “William Blake’s Dead”

Our son Ben Leddy is a member of The New Grown-Ups, who just took first in a new-band showcase at the Thomas Point Beach Bluegrass Festival in Brunswick, Maine. That’s a sample above.

Related posts
“Cumberland Gap” : “My Heart’s Own Love” : “The Devil’s Nine Questions” : The New Grown-Ups at Bandcamp

Nancy sight lines

In today’s Nancy, Olivia Jaimes plays with Bushmiller’s sight lines.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

[Bushmiller used a - - - - line , not a ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ line.]

Liverwurst’s long goodbye

Boar’s Head (yes, that Boar’s Head) has ended its production of liverwurst. Dan Barry mourns:

We all hold on to things that return us to where we came from, back to a place centered more in time than in geography. A certain doll, a certain television show, a certain snack — they are the lifesavers we cling to as the riptide of the years pulls us farther and farther from familiar shores.

For me, one of those items is, unfortunately, liverwurst.

When I read about the Boar’s Head listeria outbreak and “heavy meat buildup” on meat-plant walls, my first thought was Uh-oh, liverwurst. Still, I feel Dan Barry’s pain. But better nostalgia than listeria.

I haven’t eaten liverwurst in many, many months. But, yes, the “plump, homey, jolly[-]looking sausage” (that’s adspeak) has an OCA Pinboard tag.

Thanks, Ben.

The case of the slipaway sidebar

As you may notice, the OCA sidebar is gone, which means that I’ve likely messed something up in the HTML for a post. Paul Drake is on the case.

*

Fixed! A post to the Blogger Help Community has an easy way to spot the source of the problem: open the latest posts one by one until you find a post with the sidebar where it should be. And the post that came after that one (i.e., later in time) will be the culprit. In this case, it was a stray bit of HTML for an image — the annoying div stuff I am almost always careful to delete — that pushed the sidebar to the bottom of the page.

If you’re given to tweaking older posts — a word here, a spacing problem there — you’d best be careful, or you might be opening years of posts to find the problem. DIY: Drake doesn’t work cheap.

The New Grown-Ups: “The Devil’s Nine Questions”

As these videos drop, I’m not going to hesitate to copy and paste:

Our son Ben Leddy is a member of The New Grown-Ups, who just took first in a new-band showcase at the Thomas Point Beach Bluegrass Festival in Brunswick, Maine. That’s a sample above.

Related posts
“Cumberland Gap” : “My Heart’s Own Love” : The New Grown-Ups at Bandcamp

Recently updated

Just some diner? Now with an electric delivery-truck.

Zippy Hopper Now with more Hopper.

Zippy Hopper

[Zippy, September 15, 2024. Notice the E.H. in the corner.]

Today’s Zippy is a thing of beauty. The source: Edward Hopper’s Excursion into Philosophy.

Hopper’s work appears a number of times in Zippy. You can do a strip search to see them all.

*

September 16: More Hopper today. Maybe it’ll be Hopper Week.

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)

Twenty years of blogging

Orange Crate Art began on a Wednesday night, shortly after dinner, September 15, 2004. My children, Rachel and Ben, helped me get started. Rachel told me what to say for a first post.

Keeping this blog has brought me more possibilities of thinking and learning and sharing that I could have imagined. It’s made writing — work that always put my academic self in a state of high anxiety — a pleasure. More importantly, it’s kept me off the streets and out of trouble, at least for some chunk of time every day.

And now, onward.

Just some diner?

[553 Union Street, Gowanus, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

No, not just some diner. It’s Frank’s Diner. Or (look closely) Frank’s Union Diner. As in, “Say, how’s about we grab a cup o’ java while they’re changin’ th’ erl?”

Many details to notice in the photograph. The most interesting one: the advertisement for a radio show with Joe Penner (1904–1941), a comedian in vaudeville, radio, and film. His work is well represented at YouTube. You just have to watch a bit to notice a resemblance to Pee-wee Herman. You don’t even have to read his Wikipedia entry.

Thanks, Brian, who pointed me to this photograph some time ago. Now I'm there, and the java is great. The Joe (Penner), not so much.

[Click for a larger view.]

*

September 16: As jjdaddyo suggested in a comment, that appears to be an electric truck. I’d say that that’s the most interesting detail in the photograph. Strange: both a bakery and an electric vehicle company were named Ward.

Related reading
More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard) : 557, 561, and 571 Union Street

How to improve writing (no. 126)

[The New York Times, September 14, 2024. Click for a larger view.]

I no longer subscribe to the Times, but I’m still willing to look at the paper. I hesitated to post this bit, but I ran it past Elaine, and she had the same — instantaneous — response:

Why but ?

The conjunction makes no sense, because there’s no contradiction. What might work better:

The Democratic vice-presidential nominee has lamented the angry splits within families over politics. Indeed, he and his Republican brother rarely speak.

But (ahem) if you read the article, it’s easy to understand that it’s Tim Walz’s brother Jeff who’s on the outs with siblings:

The breach in the Walz family has been painful, according to the men’s sister, Sandra Dietrich, who lives in Nebraska, where the siblings were raised. Jeff Walz has said he has not spoken with his brother, beyond a brief phone call, in years.

“They all have their own opinions, and I have mine,” Ms. Dietrich said. “They’re my brothers and I love them.” She added that she was a Democrat and planned to vote for her brother and Ms. Harris.

“We’ve always agreed to disagree,” she continued. “That’s where I’m at with Jeff. I just wish things were different — that it didn’t wreck people.”

A cousin is quoted as saying that in 2016 Ms. Dietrich and Jeff Walz were not on speaking terms.

I’m not sure how to rewrite to remove the suggestion that the enmity here is mutual. Perhaps it is. But the article strongly implies that it’s Jeff Walz who at one point or another has cut off contact with his siblings. Here’s a possible revision if that is the case:

The Democratic vice-presidential nominee has lamented the angry splits within families over politics. Indeed, in recent years his Republican brother has had little contact with his Democratic siblings.

Pinboard
All OCA How to improve writing posts (Pinboard)

[This post is no. 126 in a series dedicated to improving stray bits of professional public prose.]

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by Stella Zawistowski. I began with 1-D, four letters, “Intro to a classic dilemma,” which seemed to be a giveaway but gave away nothing. But the clue was indeed the intro to a classic dilemma, the dilemma of how to solve a Saturday Stumper. I chipped away, here, there, everywhere, to get the rest of the puzzle.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

10-A, five letters, “Spot strife.” This clue stretches the meaning of strife, but this is the Stumper.

13-D, six letters, “On a higher plane.” A little woo-woo.

17-A, nine letters, “Slight manscaping.” Oh, okay. (Sigh of relief.)

24-D, five letters, “Take a second.” Very Stumper-y.

25-D, eight letters, “Time for a throwaway line.” It took me some time to see the point of line.

33-A, eight letters, “Restraining order.” Nicely colloquial.

36-A, fifteen letters, “Vodka/coffee concoction.” No thank you.

38-D, eight letters, “‘No thank you’ follower, perhaps.” Silly.

40-D, three letters, “Graph add-on.” Yes!

52-A, three letters, “Preceder of up or down, in or out, off or on.” A value-added clue. At least four words fit.

59-D, three letters, “Money-making machine.” Raise your hand if you thought the answer would be ATM.

63-A, five letters, “What some 90% of all people possess.” The answer is definitely not “the answer to this clue.”

65-A, five letters, “Subject of the biography The Right Word.” Easy to guess, but I’ll take it.

My favorite in this puzzle: 46-A, three letters, “Dose, taken another way.”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Blood libel redux

It occurred to me only this morning, reading a post by Daughter Number Three, that the eating-our-pets lunacy, is, like Pizzagate, a new version of the medieval blood libel. This time with Haitians, not Jews or Democrats; and with animals, not children.

It’s difficult to imagine that Donald Trump knows about the history of the blood libel. J.D. Vance, with his love of traditional Catholicism, likely does. The neo-Nazis who marched in Springfield, Ohio, likely do.

In his shambolic golf-course press conference this afternoon, Trump, ever the opportunist, declared that mass deportations would begin in Springfield and in Aurora, Colorado. What no reporter pointed out when Trump made that seemingly impromptu declaration is that Haitian immigrants in Springfield are there legally, as the city’s website makes clear.

Donald Trump has long been a stochastic terrorist. And now J.D. Vance is now one too. Springfield public schools and driver’s-license facilities are closed for a second day because of bomb threats.

*

As DN3 suggests, calling your senators and asking them to censure Vance is appropriate.

The New Grown-Ups: “My Heart’s Own Love”

As these videos drop, I’m not going to hesitate to copy and paste:

Our son Ben Leddy is a member of The New Grown-Ups, who just took first in a new-band showcase at the Thomas Point Beach Bluegrass Festival in Brunswick, Maine. That’s a sample above.

*

Oops — the song is “My Heart’s Own Love.” Post title now corrected.

Related posts
“Cumberland Gap” : The New Grown-Ups at Bandcamp

The zibaldone

The mid-fourteenth-century word zibaldone, a bit of Florentine slang, came to signify a personal notebook of miscellaneous contents. From Roland Allen’s The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper (New York: Biblioasis, 2024):

The basic principle was simple: when you found a piece of writing that you liked, or found useful, you copied it out into your personal notebook. You could copy out as much or as little as you wanted, neatly or not, and refer to it a little, or as much, as you wanted. The collection could be poetry or prose, fictional or factual, thematic or random, religious or profane, in Latin or Tuscan, or any mixture of any of these components; you could even draw pictures in it. The notebook itself could be large or small, luxurious or utilitarian....

Zibaldoni, although always idiosyncratic and personal to their owner, were not necessarily private, or intimate: you would share the highlights of your own with your friends, and if you saw something that you liked in theirs, you’d copy it over.

Sounds a lot like blogging to me.

I am seventy-one pages into this book, and it’s a joy.

Also from the book
Moleskine: seventy-five words

Rocks, unnoticed

An Atlantic crossword clue baffles

In today’s Atlantic mini-crossword, 5-A, three letters, “11-character fig. on a form.” The answer, of course, is SSN. But a Social Security number has nine digits.¹ And why does the clue read characters ? Am I missing something?

*

Elaine, who does not do crosswords, just explained it to me: nine digits and two hyphens: eleven characters. Sneaky, sneaky clue. Good thing I'm married.

            
¹ Nine digits, unless you’re Ralph Kramden, whose number has only seven.

Parataxis (with cats and ducks)

[Drudge Report, September 12, 2024. Click for a larger view.]

I can’t imagine that the placement of the Adderall-psychosis-mania headline is accidental.

[Parataxis : juxtaposition without explicit connection. An organizing principle in modernist literature. There’s nothing certain but death and parataxis.]

Mystery actor

[Click for a larger view.]

Leave your guesses in the comments. I’ll be on and off the computer this morning and will drop a hint when I can if one is needed.

*

A hint, dropped: This actor is best known for a television role, reprised in film, playing a character with no known first name.

*

I think this one is going to remain a mystery. I’ve put the answer in the comments.

More mystery actors (Collect them all)
? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ?

The Last Republican

The story behind The Last Republican, a documentary about Adam Kinzinger: “‘Do you have contempt for my views?’ How a leftwing film-maker and a Republican came together” (The Guardian ).

Irony alert

J.D. Vance:

“We admire Taylor Swift's music, but I don't think most Americans, whether they like her music, are fans of hers or not, are gonna be influenced by a billionaire celebrity who I think is fundamentally disconnected from the interests and the problems of most Americans.”

See also a previous J.D. Vance irony alert.

Some field

[Photograph by Elaine Fine.]

Just some field. Whatever you do, do not click for a larger view. Move along, folks. Nothing to see here.

About last night

In the lastest installment of Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson offers an astute analysis of last night’s debate:

The question for Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris in tonight’s presidential debate was not how to answer policy questions, but how to counter Trump’s dominance displays while also appealing to the American people.

She and her team figured it out, and today they played the former president brilliantly. He took the bait, and tonight he self-destructed. In a live debate, on national television.

Swift FTW

As just reported on MSNBC: Taylor Swift has endorsed Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.

Here it is, on Instagram.

Cleanup on aisle 45

Kamala Harris: “What we have done is clean up Donald Trump’s mess.”

*

Donald Trump: “They’re eating the pets.”

*

Kamala Harris: “World leaders are laughing at Donald Trump.”

*

Donald Trump, about offering an alternative to the Affordable Care Act: “I have concepts of a plan.”

The New Grown-Ups: “Cumberland Gap”

Our son Ben Leddy is a member of The New Grown-Ups, who just took first in a new-band showcase at the Thomas Point Beach Bluegrass Festival in Brunswick, Maine. That’s a sample above.

Notice the New Grown-Ups logo, top left. Ben is a clever guy. He’s on mandolin. All said and done.

A related post
The New Grown-Ups at Bandcamp

EXchange names sighting

The Great Bernzini (Joe Pesci), a photographer loosely based on Weegee, wants to capture a mob hit as it happens. To do so, he must figure out which Italian restaurant is hosting the private party where the hit is to take place. So he starts calling around for a reservation to find out who’ll be closed to the public tonight. From The Public Eye (dir. Howard Franklin, 1992). Click any image for a larger view.


The EXchange names and street names are real. I looked up enough of the restaurant names in the 1940 Manhattan directory to feel pretty sure that they’re all fictional. And the pages are, of course, fictional. Look closely and you can see the paste-up.

Related reading
All OCA EXchange name posts (Pinboard)

Typo alerts

From the podcast Mac Power Users, episode 760. Stephen Hackett is talking with David Sparks about readers calling attention to typos:

“Nine times out of ten that comes with an apology attached, like ‘Oh, hey, I’m sorry, I found this.‘ Thank you for sending them in. We didn’t catch it, we want to be accurate and correct, and there’s nothing worse — I’m sure you’ve had this experience too — where you come across a blog post from eight years ago and there’s a typo in it. That’s been on the Internet for almost a decade, and no one told you. It’s the worst feeling, so thank you for sending those in.”

That’s my attitude too.

James Earl Jones (1931–2024)

James Earl Jones has died at the age of ninety-three. The Guardian has an obituary.

Darth Vader? Mufasa? Sure. But I always think of him as Lear.

Mystery actor

[Click for a larger view.]

One of those moments: Wait, is that ________? Yes, that’s ________.

Leave your guesses in the comments. I’ll be on and off the computer this morning and will drop a hint when I can if one is needed.

*

9:04 a.m.: The answer is now in the comments.

More mystery actors (Collect them all)
? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ?

Fifty blog-description lines

For many years the first words of Van Dyke Parks’s song “Orange Crate Art” — “Orange crate art was a place to start” — served as what Blogger calls a “blog description line.” In May 2010, I began to vary the line, always choosing some word or words or element of punctuation from a post then on the front page, and always keeping the quotation marks that had enclosed Van Dyke’s words. I like looking back at these bits of language from a distance. Sometimes I recognize the context at once. “Puissance without hauteur”? Bob and Ray. “Fifty years late?” I had to look it up. I didn’t catch the repetition of “Traffic and weather.”

“Traffic and weather on the eights”
“Eccentric adventures”
“It’s just . . . it’s notes.”
“That ain't hay”
“As well-lit as a good film noir”
“Write a blog instead of posting to Twitter or Facebook”
“In so-called adult life”
“Perimeter oscillations”
“E.g, i.e., etc.”
“One fluke visible”
“Puissance without hauteur”
“Shortened studies”
“Created from a combination of many small precise
    decisions”
“Fifty years late”
“Mostly groovy”
“Great typos”
“Things keep accumulating”
“I wanna be where the people are”
“In the pencil what?”
“Office fritters”
“Books, always books”
“Scholarly voracity”
“:~:”
“Against the terrible odds of syntax”
“One more way to look like an outlier”
“Thick with virtual dust”
“ Are we really doing this?”
“I don’t feel human uptown”
“Tired of hitting”
“F♯min Emaj7 F♯min Emaj7 G♯min D E C B”
“Typing and typing”
“Is it raining on the phone, or outside?”
“Rattle OK”
“Viva música, bendita música”
“However fleeting, however partial”
“In the new old-fashioned way”
“Writer-y”
“It’s not as if we have only a finite supply of commas
    available”
“Subjects and verbs”
“You sure we’ve come to the right place?”
“To please not call me ‘Doctor’”
“‘Meticulous,’ ‘commendable,’ ‘intricate’”
“Knock, knock, who’s there?”
“Inventory”
“Got hyphens?”
“Get up, dress up, and show up”
“It goes idea by idea”
“I've run my random character generator”
“Traffic and weather”
“Please change your hold music”

More blog-description lines
Two hundred blog-description lines : Fifty more : And fifty more : But wait — there’s more : Another fifty : Is there no end to this folly? : It would appear not : Still more items in a series

“Red flags for scholars of fascism”

Heather Cox Richardson usually takes a break from writing Letters from an American and posts a photograph as the week ends. But this weekend she was writing, about an increasingly aberrant presidential candidate. From the September 7 installment of Letters from an American :

Trump has always invented his stories from whole cloth, but there used to be some way to tie them to reality. Today that seemed to be gone. He was in a fantasy world, and his rhetoric was apocalyptic. It was also bloody in ways that raise huge red flags for scholars of fascism.

This installment of Letters from an American, like every other installment of Letters from an American, deserves a wide audience.

Neon in semi-daylight

[4920 New Utrecht Avenue, Boro Park, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

“Neon in daylight is a / great pleasure”: Frank O’Hara, in “A Step Away from Them,” imagining what his friend and fellow poet Edwin Denby would write.

I chose this photograph for its neon in semi-daylight, vivid in the shadow of the El. The band of light between the El and the buildings looks itself a bit like neon, or at least like fluorescence.

A quick check of online sources shows that in 1909 the 4920 address housed a saloon. A neighborhood miscreant passed a bad check there. The construction of the El in 1914 led to lawsuits from the owner of 4920 and other property owners on the block over noise, darkness, and decreased rental value, with damages paid out in 1922. In 1933 4920 may have housed a delicatessen.

The property may have been undergoing an identity crisis when its tax photograph was taken. Was it a bar & grill? (Look closely.) A delicatessen? (Look closely.) A liquor store? (Look closely.) The 1940 telephone directory has it as a restaurant:

[Click for a larger view.]

Two brands of beer are advertised in the window, Breldt’s and Ox Head. The Peter Breldt Brewing Company was based in Elizabeth, New Jersey. During Prohibition, the Peter Breldt Company, minus the Brewing, brewed near beer that was too near. Ox Head was a product of the Wehle Brewing Company, West Haven, Connecticut.

In 1949, just days after a liquor license was issued to the Utrecht Restaurant (to a new owner?), this advertisement appeared in The Brooklyn Eagle:

[The Brooklyn Eagle, March 20, 1949.]

Someone was cleaning house.

The Utrecht Restaurant, still operating under that name, received another liquor license (for yet another owner?) in 1963. In 1964 the liquor license for this address went to the Boro Lounge. Today the first floor of 1420 is split between Emil’s Shoes and Zion Car Service.

Related reading
More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard) : C. O. Bigelow : Minetta Tavern : Saratoga Bar and Cafe