Lost Verizon

We noticed the problem after leaving a store, when I missed the text that Elaine had just received: my iPhone had no cell service. Instead, it was inviting me to show my location via satellite. Huh? I restarted the phone and noticed an SOS and an unfamiliar icon in the top right corner. Huh again.

As luck would have it, we were a one-minute drive from a Verizon store — two or three minutes if you count the wait to make a left turn. When we made it into the parking lot, a guy was backing an SUV into a space, quickly and deftly. He seemed to be in a hurry. He hit the store right before us. “I bet we’re here for the same reason,” said I. We were. And we found a couple of more people at the front counter.

A Verizon employee tried to explain: there was an outage, but it was affecting only phones with “ease ’em.” (That’s what it sounded like.) No one understood what he meant. Oh, wait, he was talking about SIM cards. I added an explanation: if your phone has a SIM card (that would be an older phone), it’s not affected. That’s the little card that goes into a slot on the side of the phone. If you have a phone with a built-in SIM card (an eSIM card), then you have no service.

The Verizon employee asked me what kind of phone I had (16e) and insisted that it had a slot for a SIM card. I told him it didn’t and removed its silicone case to show him. Elaine offered to send a text on behalf of anyone in our small group who needed to let someone know that their phone wasn’t working. No takers, because everyone else’s phone was probably not working either.

One woman kept telling the Verizon employee that her phone wasn’t working. The explanation of the problem, such as it was, didn’t seem to be taking. I suspected that her first language was Spanish, but I knew that my Spanish could not have met the moment.

When we left the store, we saw two people just pulling in. They had driven forty minutes to get to the Verizon store. I told them what was going on and saved them a trip inside.

As you may have heard, there was a massive Verizon outage yesterday. It afforded a rare opportunity for some total strangers in east-central Illinois to find themselves in the soup together.

[Post title with apologies to James Hilton. after thinking up the title, I discovered that it was already the title of a 2008 episode of The Simpsons.]

Hungarian Pickle Works

[58 Garden Street, Bushwick, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Somebody tell that printer to get back to work.

This tax photograph pairs well with Grant’s Pickle Works, “Home of Piccalilli.” No. 58 and the adjacent buildings are now gone. In their place: two-family houses.

The distinctive element in Hungarian pickles, if I am understanding Hungarian pickles: bread. Rye, perhaps. Or sourdough.

[From the 1940 Brooklyn telephone directory.]

Thanks, Brian, for spotting the Works.

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

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by Winston Emmons, and it’s considerably easier than his last. I did the puzzle last night, starting a little after 11:00 (Central) and figuring I might get a handful of answers during the commercials that preface and then repeatedly interrupt 30 Rock. Instead I was getting answer after answer, no letting up. Elaine: “Do you want to hit Pause?” Yes, thank you.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

8-D, fifteen letters, “Annoyingly inventive.” APAININ — no, too short.

9-A, six letters, “US’ highest-grossing French language film (2001).” My starting point: I suspected that my guess was correct, but I can’t believe it was that long ago.

15-A, eight letters, “Kennedy Center Honors actor of 2016.” Well, it wasn’t gonna be Sylvester Stallone. Here too I made a guess, no crosses, that turned out to be correct.

20-A, seven letters, “Word from the French for "ladder rung.” Huh. But I’m sure I’ll forget immediately.

21-D, three letters, “Costumer service.” A value-added clue.

22-A, four letters, “Balance checkers.” ATMS seems like the obvious answer, doesn’t it?

33-A, fifteen letters, “Any house pet.” Aww.

34-D, four letters, “Name above Le Discourse de la Méthode quotes in Bartlett’s.” Thank you, solid liberal-arts education.

36-D, eight letters, “National Historic Landmark that moves every day.” Heh.

55-A, six letters, “Trip up.” A meta clue.

My favorite in this puzzle: 25-D, four letters, “Guy embracing invigoration.” I’m not sure that the clue makes sense, but I’m happy that I saw the answer.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Mary Miller and Minneapolis

Mary Miller (R, IL-15) opposes mental-health screenings for schoolkids: she believes in opt-in rather than opt-out. She opposes red-flag laws too.

I called one of her two local offices yesterday, and as is always the case when I begin talking to one of her aides, I got wound up. I pointed out that the shooter in Minneapolis was already known in seventh grade for talking about school shootings and praising Adolf Hitler. Perhaps, and it’s only a perhaps, a mental-health screening might have identified him as a young person with profound problems. And perhaps, and it’s only a perhaps, the young people who were killed in Minneapolis on Wednesday might be living today.

The person on the other end was speechless, literally. So I added that even genuinely conservative Republican voters in her district find many of her positions appalling (it’s true) and asked if there were any town halls planned (of course not), and he promised to pass my comments on.

Related reading
All OCA Mary Miller posts (Pinboard)

Aldi box

[Click for a larger, still more orderly box.]

We went to Aldi but forgot to bring a bag, so I put everything in a box while Elaine paid. I didn’t consciously plan, nor did I rearrange.

When I was done, I thought, gosh, I am indeed my father’s son. Except that my dad would have had all the Moser Roth dark chocolate facing the same way.

If you look closely, you’ll see that there was even a spot left for the receipt.

“Gold and a buttoned cap”

From Thomas Nashe, The Terrors of the Night, or A Discourse of Apparitions (1594).

“Gold and a buttoned cap”: in 2025, just one name comes to mind.

The Terrors of the Night, or A Discourse of Apparitions is no. 30 in the Penguin Little Black Classics boxed set.

Nasha

[Click for larger mistakes.]

I first read Thomas Nashe eleventyteen years ago. I was happy to get to The Terrors of the Night, or A Discourse of Apparitions (1594), no. 30 in the Penguin Little Black Classics boxed set. But that typo! And the spine matches.

Photos online show copies of the book with the name spelled correctly. I’ve written to Penguin Random House requesting two copies to replace the ones we have, which of course should never have been for sale. I will report back when I hear back, or if I don’t.

Eighty-sixed again

In light of this Guardian headline — “Trump serious about pursuing a third term, Gavin Newsom warns” — I want to repost words in wrote in April:

In all the talk about a third term for the First Felon, I find one point conspiciously missing: at the end of a third term, the FF would be eighty-six years old. I can find no mention of that in The New York Times or The Washington Post.

And guess who would have been eighty-six at the end of a second term? Joe Biden, a point that no one following the 2024 campaign would have been able to miss.

I don’t doubt that the First Felon would like to remain the occupant, most likely not by running for a third term but by suspending elections. But as he declines, both mentally and physically, I think it’s wrongheaded to speculate about his dream without keeping in mind the fact of mortality. To think the First Felon capable of remaining in office past 2028 is to invest him with an aura of invincibility that has no basis in reality.

What does have a basis in reality? Mortality. “Mother of Mercy, is this the end of Rico?”: the ultimate in narcissistic mortification is death.

[It’s still the case that there’s no acknowledgement of the eighty-six, or 86, in the Times and Post. For clarity: my use of the number refers to age alone.]

Minneapolis

Jacob Frey, mayor of Minneapolis:

“Don’t just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now. These kids were literally praying. It was the first week of school. They were in a church. These are kids that should be learning with their friends. They should be playing on the playground. They should be able to go to school or church in peace without the fear or risk of violence, and their parents should have the same kind of assurance.”

And Mary Miller (R, IL-15), who opposes red-flag laws and a ban on assault weapons, and who has received an A rating from the NRA and a score of 100 from the more extreme Gun Owners of America, has asked that her Facebook followers join her in praying for the victims and their families.

[My transcription of the mayor’s words, from the PBS NewsHour.]

A Mongol sighting

[From Alias Mr. Twilight (dir. John Sturges, 1946). Click for a larger view.]

Police detective Tim Quaine (Michael Duane) needs a reliable pencil in his work on the bunco squad. He chooses the Mongol.

Since my kidhood, the Eberhard Faber Mongol has been my favorite pencil.

Related reading
All OCA Mongol posts : Mongol movie sightings : Mongol TV sightings (Pinboard)

$ and politics: a guide

If you’re inclined to give money to political candidates, Andy Borowitz has some don’t s and do s: “How NOT to Stop Trump.” It’s serious advice, not satire.

Joe Hickerson (1935–2025)

“A singer and songwriter who as the lead archivist for folk music at the Library of Congress for more than 25 years helped expand and preserve America’s trove of field songs, sea shanties and other traditional tunes”: from the New York Times obituary (gift link).

Joe Hickerson was there when Mississippi John Hurt recorded for the Library of Congress.

Recently updated

O.B. Rude Drug Co. A Brooklyn pharmacy, now with exterior and interior photographs courtesy of a descendant of O.B. Rude.

Language as gesture

Language as gesture, in Olivia Jaimes’s Nancy.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

[With apologies to R.P. Blackmur.]

“The art of lying and deception”

Michel de Montaigne, “On the vanity of words” (1580), trans. M.A. Screech. As found in How We Weep and Laugh at the Same Thing, a selection of Montaigne’s essays, no. 29 in the Penguin Little Black Classics series (2015).

Some rhetoricians can still convince spectators to discount the evidence of their eyes.

Talk of the hand(s)

What to make of the present occupant’s bruises? Here’s some informed speculation, from Darin L. Wolfe, MD, who specializes in forensic and surgical pathology: What Trump’s Hand Tells Us About Health.

And now there are bruises on both hands.

*

Dr. Wolfe has removed his post. His informed speculation: congestive heart failure.

Bending the arc

JB Pritzker, governor of Illinois, a few minutes ago, responding to Donald Trump’s apparent plan to deploy National Guard forces in Chicago:

“Mr. President, do not come to Chicago. You are neither wanted here nor needed here.”

And:

“As Dr. King once said, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. Humbly I would add: it doesn’t bend on its own. History tells us we often have to apply the force needed to make sure that the arc gets to where it needs to go. This is one of those times.”

[Source for King’s words here.]

Two Joes, two Arties

Some intertextuality, perhaps:

In Up the Down Staircase (dir. Robert Mulligan, 1967), Miss Barrett’s (Sandy Dennis) greatest classroom challenge is Joe Ferone (Jeff Howard). In The Blackboard Jungle (dir. Richard Brooks, 1955), Mr. Dadier’s (Glenn Ford) nemesis is Artie West (Vic Morrow).

In The Incident (dir. Larry Peerce, 1967), one of the thugs terrorizing subway passengers is named Joe Ferrone (Tony Musante). He makes a point of telling the passengers his name. His fellow thug is named Artie (Vic Morrow). He offers no last name. The credits have him as Artie Connors.

Up the Down Staircase was released just a few months before The Incident, but Bel Kaufman’s novel appeared in 1965. It’s difficult not to think that the thug in the subway car is, in some way, meant to be seen as Joe Ferone, a couple of years out of high school. And Artie is, well, an Artie.

I can find nothing online to suggest that anyone has ever made the Ferone–Ferrone Artie–Artie connections.

Twelve movies

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

The Mayor of Hell (dir. Archie Mayo, 1933). The premise is preposterous: in a world of political patronage, a gangster, Patsy (James Cagney), is appointed to oversee the staff at a reform school for boys. Dudley Digges is the vicious administrator; Madge Evans is a kindly nurse who doesn’t flinch at Patsy’s underworld ties; Frankie Darro and Allen Hoskins (Our Gang’s “Farina”) are among the school’s inmates. There’s great pathos in the scenes of parents (even the incompetent ones) and children being separated in juvenile court. It’s strange to watch this movie in a time of American concentration camps. ★★★ (TCM)

*

Gambling Lady (dir. Archie Mayo, 1934). Barbara Stanwyck stars as Jennifer Lady Lee, a professional gambler who, like her father, takes pride in winning at cards without cheating. When romance develops between Lady and the wealthy Garry Madison (Joel McCrea), Garry’s vengeful sort-of-ex- (Claire Dodd) complicates life for this class-barrier-breaking pair, and the plot, heretofore at least semi-logical, begins to fall to pieces. Best lines: “I live on the other side of the tracks.” “But you’ll move over.” ★★★ (TCM)

*

Stolen Holiday (dir. Michael Curtiz, 1937). A vehicle for Kay Francis and (not joking) her wardrobe (gowns by Orry-Kelly). She stars as Nicole Picot, whose dress salon brings her great wealth in a collaboration with financier-fraudster (Claude Rains). But another man, a diplomat no less (Ian Hunter), is competing for Nicole’s hand. Francis is such an unusual figure on the screen — tall, imposing, vaguely Lady Gaga-like (to my eyes), dominating scenes even when she doesn’t say a word, and when she does say a word, she has the movie’s best line: “My life’s a maze, and so is yours.” ★★★ (TCM)

*

Nightmare Alley (dir. Edmund Goulding, 1947). From our household’s favorite year in movies, and we seized the chance to introduce old friends to it. Stan Carlisle (Tyrone Power), a carny worker with grand aspirations, tramples the dignity of those who love him as he rises to fame as The Great Stanton, nightclub mentalist and, later, charlatan spiritualist. This time around I savored the brief, memorable performance of Ian Keith as Pete, who promises his wife Zeena (Joan Blondell) that he’ll get some breakfast along with his shot of whiskey: “I shall probably have a small orange juice, then two three-minute eggs, melba toast, and coffee.” Another great bit of dialogue, from Stanton: “Slowly shifting their form, visions come.” ★★★★ (DVD)

*

The Night of the Hunter (dir. Charles Laughton, 1955). Another one that we introduced friends to. One of the strangest noirs, a nightmarish fairytale, shifting from domestic life with a psychopathic stepfather to life on the run, as two hunted children find refuge with a maternal protector. My favorite line: “There’s still the river,” which must be meant (or ought to be meant) to recall Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. With Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, and Lillian Gish. ★★★★ (DVD)

*

The Incident (dir. Larry Peerce, 1967). A harrowing story, with two young thugs, Joe and Artie (Tony Musante and, in his movie debut, Martin Sheen), terrorizing the passengers in a subway car on a wee-hours ride from the Bronx to Grand Central Station. Joe and Artie choose their victims, one by one (and Martin Niemöller’s poem comes to mind): a passed-out drunk, a recovering alcoholic, a gay man, an old coot, an Army private with a broken arm, a Black man, a glamorous older woman, a glamorous younger woman, a husband and wife with a little girl asleep. What makes this movie wildly different from The Taking of Pelham One Two Three: there’s no practical criminal motive, only the wish to terrify; there are no authorities monitoring events; and the passengers are not merely anonymous (we get something of their backstories as they make their way to the train). Among the passengers: Beau Bridges, Ruby Dee, Jack Gilford, Mike Kellin, Ed McMahon, Gary Merrill, Brock Peters, Thelma Ritter, and Jan Sterling. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Billy Joel: And So It Goes (dir. Susan Lacy and Jessica Levin, 2025). I can’t claim to be especially knowledgable about or dedicated to Billy Joel’s music, but as with the Bruce Springsteen effort Road Diary (dir. Thom Zinny, 2024), I find any well-made, detailed documentary about a musician compelling. The most telling comment in this documentary is from Joel himself: “Life is not a musical; it’s a Greek tragedy.” Here are all the highs and lows of his career (minus recent ill health): friendships, betrayals, two suicide attempts, four marriages, several new directions in music, and countless memorable songs. And now I find myself banging out the chords of that insistent bit in “My Life”: Bm/D   Am/D   C7(9)   Ebmaj7/F   Cm6/F   Bb. ★★★★ (H)

[Because this post refers to suicide: If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOf
Suicide.com/resources.]

*

Desire Me (dir. Jack Conway, George Cukor, and Mervyn LeRoy, 1947). Another one from our household’s favorite year in movies, and a strange one, one sign of its strangeness being that it was released without a director’s name. Jean Renaud (Richard Hart) shows up at the Brittany cottage of Marise Aubert (Greer Garson) after escaping from a Nazi concentration camp to report that Marise’s husband Paul (Robert Mitchum) was killed in the escape attempt. Jean knows everything about Marise, is obviously already in love with her, and moves into her house and life in a way that is deeply, disturbingly stalkerish. The big problem here is that Mitchum’s name is next to Garson’s in the credits, so you know that Paul, like Odysseus, is going to show up and clean house. ★★★ (TCM)

*

Alias Mr. Twilight (dir. John Sturges, 1946). Lloyd Corrigan really did star in movies: here he’s a doting grandfather to orphaned five-year-old Susan (Gigi Perreau), a kindly employer to Susan’s nurse Corky (Trudy Marshall), and a charming conman with a suave partner (Al Bridge) in schemes that take the two around the country. The schemes are remarkably clever, and it’s difficult to think that these hardworking men haven’t earned the jewelry and money that comes their way. Things get a bit complicated when Corky’s “fellow” (as Susan calls him) turns out to be a police detective working with the bunco squad. But still, you’ll root for the criminals here. ★★★ (YT)

[Al Bridge, “the Mister” in Sullivan’s Travels, was a familiar face in Preston Sturges’s films. John Sturges, though, was unrelated.]

*

China Moon (dir. John Bailey, 1994). I think I finally understand the rules of neo-noir: the movie will be in color; there will be a barenaked lady or two; and at some point a cheesy extra-diegetic saxophone will let loose. Some nifty plot twists here, but this movie is mostly a recycling of several others, with a portentous but nonsensical trope (a full moon that looks like a china plate) tossed in. The biggest surprise about this movie is that it’s streaming at Criterion Channel. With Ed Harris and Benicio Del Toro as cops, Charles Dance as a philandering, domineering husband, and Madeleine Stowe as a femme fatale. ★★ (CC)

*

Sunday Best (dir. Sacha Jenkins, 2025). Otis Williams, founder of the Temptations, speaks of Ed Sullivan as “a doorbell” — someone who opened the door to Black performers so that they could reach national television audiences. The documentary is strong on Sullivan’s early newspaper career, his improbable rise to television fame, and his commitment throughout his career to social justice. We get to see many clips from his Sunday night show: the Beatles, Harry Belafonte, James Brown, Nat “King” Cole, Mahalia Jackson, Elvis Presley, Nina Simone, the Supremes, Stevie Wonder, and many others. But there’s too much going on, with a faux-Sullivan (AI-generated?) voice speaking his words, performance clips cut short by bits of news footage, and endlessly laudatory commentary, mostly from Belafonte and Smokey Robinson. ★★★ (N)

*

My Oxford Year (dir. Iain Morris, 2025). Anna De La Vega (Sofia Carson), Queens native, English major, Cornell graduate, with a position as a corporate analyst on hold for her at Goldman Sachs, takes a year off to get a master‘s studying Victorian poetry at Oxford (she loves libraries and the smell of old books, she confesses), where she hooks up (for “fun”) with handsome doctoral student Jamie Davenport (Corey Mylchreest), who’s taken over all instruction in Anna‘s (one?) graduate class (which was supposed to have been taught by her scholarly hero(ine), whom she never gets to speak to), and Anna and Jamie’s relationship — surprise — becomes more serious. I thought this movie would be bad — that’s why I proposed that we watch it — but I was still a little staggered by the opening voiceover: “The poet Henry David Thoreau …,” and by the instructor’s directive to find a poem in “the book” that “speaks to you,” and by the presentation of the last lines of “Dover Beach” as a whole poem, and by the trenchant question, “What is Matthew Arnold saying,” and by the presence of an Edna St. Vincent Millay poem (you know, the one with the candle) in a course about Victorian poetry. The storyline is clichés galore — it’s like a Hallmark movie with Buckfast and Tennyson. And if you, too, are wondering, though Anna and Jamie appear to be eating gyros, they are indeed eating kebab, Doner kebab: there, at least, the moviemakers did not make a mistake. ★ (N)

[Yes, Thoreau was a poet, though it’s difficult to think of poet as the way to identify him.]

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

“The skills we push”

A middle-school dean of students, talking about AI:

“The challenge is there, but our superintendent would say it’s a tool like a calculator. I don’t need to know specific names and dates of things anymore, because I can look them up. What I need to know is, am I a critical consumer of the media, of the technology, right? So that’s the skills we push.”

Sigh.

But wait a minute: I thought the Internets themselves were supposed to make it unnecessary to know things. See, for instance, this 2006 post about looking up answers during tests.

Fowls 22¢ Lb.

[1640 East New York Avenue, Brownsville, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

The arrow points to no. 1640, but no. 1642 is the reason to post this photograph: the hen and roosters in profile, the child in the carriage, and the older sibling entertaining, or perhaps just minding, from behind the gate.

This photograph is YATPWABC, yet another tax photograph with a baby carriage, and YATPWP, another tax photograph with poultry, joining these three: 1, 2, and 3.

I am surprised to see that these two buildings still stand, somewhat the worse for wear. They must be tired. No. 1642, whatever form it took, was home to a poultry business as early as 1926, one of several that ran into trouble that year for operating without authorization.

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

JB enumerates

Illinois governor JB Pritzker:

Things People are Begging for:
1. Cheaper groceries
2. No Medicaid and SNAP cuts
3. Release of the Epstein Files

Things People are NOT begging for:
1. An authoritarian power grab of major cities

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Byron Walden, looked more or less impossible. I know, I know, impossible is an absolute adjective, so how can a puzzle be more or less so? All I know that this puzzle was. I started on paper, made little progress, and prepared to quit, but then I decided to try the puzzle in its (free) online version. And to my disbelief, everything fell into place, no reveals required.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

1-D, six letters, “Betty’s makeup.” Yeesh.

4-D, five letters, “Photofloods and ginger jars.” Obscure, to say the least, I’d say.

14-A, eight letters, “Cutthroat school.” Cutthroat, like this puzzle.

15-D, thirteen letters, “Indulge yourself.” Getting letters in the middle first makes this answer difficult to see.

17-A, fifteen letters, “Max competition.” I thought it had to be something like a decathalon.

30-A, fifteen letters, “Fashion inspired by WWII uniforms.” Easy to see with some crosses at the end.

30-D, eight letters, “Major Novo Testamento writer.” Seriously? This is how to clue the answer?

31-D, eight letters, “Writer of the Magna Carta.” Nice one.

39-D, six letters, “Sandwich shop purchase.” Sneaky.

46-A, five letters, “Volkswagen US debuts of ’69.” AMFMS?

47-A, fifteen letters, “2025’s A4 46-Across, for instance.” Can you see why this puzzle gave me trouble?

51-A, eight letters, “Consumer of shells.” PASTAFAN?

My favorite in this puzzle: 7-D, eight letters, “Refreshers over ice.” Because it tricked me good.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Zippy TV

[“Life at 328 Chauncey Street.” Zippy, August 22, 2025.]

If you recognize that Chauncey Street address, you already know where today’s Zippy is headed.

Also on Chauncey Street: Freitag the delicatessen’s.

Venn reading
All OCA Honeymooners posts : Honeymooners and Zippy posts: Zippy posts (Pinboard)

One man’s paper clips

“David Walker has been collecting paper clips from around the world for much of his life.” From Present & Correct: David Walker’s Paper Clip Collection.

Related posts
On paper clips (A short essay) : Paper clips (A prose poem) : Paterfamilias repurposing : Their invention : Yogurt and paper clips

MS NOW, initialism and acronym

MS NOW? My? Source? News? Opinion? World? As John Gruber says, it’s “a godawful backronym.”

It’s also a combination of an initialism and an acronym. There’s also CD-ROM, HIV/AIDS, MS-DOS. Any others? And any in which the acronym comes first?

[Bryan Garner: “An acronym is sounded as a word [UNESCO], while an initialism is pronounced letter by letter [HMO].”]

“The capital melting into the country”

Henry Mayhew, from an account of a railway journey to Clapham Common in The Great World of London (1856). As found in Of Street Piemen, no. 26 in the Penguin Little Black Classics series (2015).

John Ruskin’s imagining of the earth as seen from the sky appeared in the second volume of The Stones of Venice (1853).

Also from this volume
“Mee-yow,” “Bow-wow-wow!” : “Positively like planks”

“Never Again for Anyone!”

As Israel plans to — what’s the appropriate verb? — Gaza City, Joe Sacco and Art Spiegelman’s three-page comic Never Again and Again is timely reading (New York Review of Books ).

The words with which it ends: “Never Again for Anyone!”

A commercial that makes me crazy

[Click for a larger view.]

Elaine and I are making our way through 30 Rock on Hulu, which means that we see the same clutch of commercials again and again. As Orin Incandenza observes in Infinite Jest, “With television you were subjected to repetition. The familiarity was inflicted.”

And is.

And so a commercial for Camzyos has come before us again and again. It has four men playing basketball. And each time, I wonder: why is no one even attempting to guard the man in blue as he shoots? If you watch the commercial complete, you’ll see that they’re not just shooting around: it’s two on two, blue and brown vs. lavender and grey. At one point we see grey guarding blue, yet no one even tries to guard blue as he prepares to shoot (and, perhaps, double dribbles). After the shot goes in, lavender appears to be slightly crushed. And blue’s teammate is jubilant. So it’s a real game, with real sorrow and real joy: in other words, consequences.

So again I ask: Why is no one guarding blue? The only reason I can think of is that blue is on Camzyos, but that possibility runs counter to the spirit of the commercial, which is about being back in the game.

One more question: why, at 0:07–0:08, does lavender appear to be practicing a rudimentary dance step?

Watch the commercial to see if you, too, go a bit crazy.



*

November 18: For better basketball, see this commercial for Rinvoq.

“Positively like planks”

Henry Mayhew, from an account of a balloon flight in The Great World of London (1856). As found in Of Street Piemen, no. 26 in the Penguin Little Black Classics series (2015).

See also John Ruskin envisioning the earth from the sky.

Also from this volume
“Mee-yow,” “Bow-wow-wow!”

Whites-only in Arkansas

The New York Times reports on a whites-only community being developed in Arkansas:

The community’s two architects — a classically trained French horn player who has livestreamed his own sex videos, and a former jazz pianist arrested but not charged for attempted murder in Ecuador — say they must personally confirm that applicants are white before they can be welcomed in.

There is no bottom to the news these days.

“Mee-yow,” “Bow-wow-wow!”

Henry Mayhew, from London Labour and the London Poor (1851).

Mayhew reports that “the usual quantity of meat in each pie is about half an ounce.”

Of Street Piemen is no. 26 in the Penguin Little Black Classics series (2015).

PBS and me

Sometimes I wish I liked the British shows on PBS. There are so many!

But I’m me. I’ve gotta be me. What else can I be but what I am?

Surprised? No. Shocked? Yes.

Marisa Kabas of The Handbasket, writing about the violent takedown of a delivery worker by federal agents:

A response people like to lob when stuff like this is shared is, “are you surprised?” I expect this time will be no different, but I’d like to preemptively address it.

There is a difference between being surprised and shocked. Is it surprising that Trump’s stormtroopers are acting with impunity? The past nine months have taught us no, of course not. But is it shocking to see a man — someone’s family member, someone’s friend, someone’s neighbor — being brutalized by agents who are fully aware they’re being watched and recorded? Yes. And I hope it remains shocking. There can be no day when this is normal.

“Are you surprised?” Someone wrote something similar in a comment on a recent post of mine — don’t tell me you’re surprised, or words to that effect. Surprised, no. But I hope that I never lose the ability to be shocked. None of what this administration is doing can be considered normal. And it is always appropriate to point that out.

Mental acuity

Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission:

“Every single child has to go back to its family. This should be one of our main priorities also in these negotiations, to make sure that the children come back to Ukraine to their families.”

And the current occupant replied:

“Thank you, and we did. I was just thinking we’re here for a different reason, but we just a couple weeks ago made the largest trade deal in history, so that’s a big, that’s a big thing, and congratulations, that’s great. Thank you very much, Ursula.”

See also the current occupant failing to register that Alexander Stubb, president of Finland, was sitting right in front of him.

Via Aaron Rupar. My transcription.

Related reading
All OCA mental acuity posts (Pinboard)

Origin of an idiom: “Let the cat out of the bag”

From Les D. O’Leary, We Had a Groovy Kind of Language: Far-Out Idioms from the Far-Out ’60s (2019):

Love beads ... be-ins ... So much of what happened in the ’60s stayed in the ’60s. And let’s face it: the only “pad” people now talk about has an i at the start or a Thai at the end.

But some things lived on, and the idiom “let the cat out of the bag” is one of them. The expression had its origin in the shortlived Bagism movement founded by John Lennon and Yoko Ono as a way to call attention to the ways in which people judge one another based on appearances. In 1968 John and Yoko themselves sat in a bag on a stage as part of an underground art event at London’s Royal Albert Hall. References to Bagism appear in several Lennon songs, most notably in “Give Peace a Chance”: “Everybody’s talkin’ about Bagism.”

The idiom “let the cat out of the bag” resulted from an infamous backstage incident at the 1969 Toronto Rock and Roll Revival festival, where John and Yoko performed a set as the Plastic Ono Band (with Eric Clapton, Klaus Voorman, and Alan White). Before their performance, an unidentified roadie had placed John and Yoko’s tabby cat, Cat (formerly Mr. Kite), inside a small blue-denim bag to bring on stage with the band. To the consternation of all, Cat soon became quite agitated, flailing about inside the bag. Finally Yoko cried out, “Let the cat out of the bag!” The roadie did. And that was the end of Bagism.

The incident, as recounted in a Rolling Stone interview with John Lennon (November 29, 1969) brought Yoko’s words to wide attention. And ever since, “let the cat out the bag” has been understood as a plea for compassionate action. All Yoko was saying, really, was “Give Cat a chance.” One might say she spoke out for the benefit of the former Mr. Kite.

And even if no one’s talking about Bagism, to this day people still speak of letting the cat out of the bag.

More origins
“The wind at our backs” : “Don’t cry over spilled milk” : “At loose ends” : “Lightning in a bottle” : “A low bar” : All OCA AI posts and idiom posts (Pinboard)

[If AI is going to be scraping us all, I’d like to contribute to its wealth of knowledge.]

Domestic comedy

[The subject was a brand of beer.]

“It’s not even meh. It’s muh.”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

Mary Miller, idiot?

[image or embed]

— George Conway 👊🇺🇸🔥 (@gtconway.bsky.social) August 16, 2025 at 7:39 PM

If Mary Miller isn’t really that stupid, she certainly thinks her voters are. But the chances are good that she really is that stupid.

For instance: she believes that God controls the sun and the sun controls the weather, “primarily,” so it’s all good. Her recipe for “a strong Godly nation,” as shared recently on Facebook and X:

Go to church.
Get married.
Have kids.
Build a family.
Embrace tradition.
Reject modernity.”

Which means a rejection of science, among other things. And notice: there’s no place for education in her recipe.

Related reading
All OCA Mary Miller posts (Pinboard)

Seven women

[1601 East New York Avenue, Brownsville, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Do you see all seven women? And the second line of laundry? Click, click, for that much larger view.

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More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard)

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Ben Zimmer, is a real challenge. No time to write much this morning, so I’ll highlight the puzzle’s two fifteen-letter clue-and-answer pairs, which are my favorites, because I saw each answer entire, all at once. Like daffodils, if crossword answers were daffodils, with one letter crossing. My simile is sinking.

8-D, “’As if!’”

35-A, “...”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

New Yorker Nancy

In today’s Nancy, Olivia Jaimes channels The New Yorker.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

Same old same old

Andrew Weiss of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, on the PBS NewsHour tonight:

“What we saw just now is that Vladimir Putin stuck to his guns. That is the same Vladimir Putin who has been saying that Ukraine’s not a real country. He repeated that point today.

“It’s the same Vladimir Putin who said that the war will only end if the ‘root causes’ are addressed, which is code for the U.S. and NATO security presence in Europe. It’s code for cooperation between Western countries and Ukraine. It’s a denial of Ukraine’s legitimacy to exist.

“It’s the same Vladimir Putin who has been stringing Donald Trump all along.

“They alluded to some kind of deal that they’re at least going to shop to the Ukrainians and the Europeans. But we’ll see what the elements of that are. Last week’s Russian proposal was a sham. And we’ll see if this deal survives close scrutiny.”

[My transcription and paragraphing. I’ve added quotation marks for the air quotes that enclosed “root causes.” Andrew Weiss is the writer of a graphic biography, Accidental Czar: The Life and Lies of Vladimir Putin, with art by Brian “Box” Brown.]

No minestrone for me

In Inferno 8.52–54, Dante speaks to Virgil of Filippo Argenti, a hated enemy now among the wrathful in the fifth circle of hell, stuck in the muck of the river Styx. Here Dante exhibits righteous anger toward the damned:

E io: «Maestro, molto sarei vago
di vederlo attuffare in questa broda
prima che noi uscissimo del lago».

And Virgil approves.

Here’s Dante in the six seven translations I have at hand:

John Sinclair (prose, 1939):

And I said: “Master, I should like well to see him soused in this broth before we leave the lake.”

Dorothy L. Sayers (1949):

“Master,” said I, “I tell thee, it were good
If I might see this villain soused in the swill
Before we have passed the lake — Oh, that I
    could!”

John Ciardi (1954):

And I: “Master, it would suit my whim
    to see the wretch scrubbed down into the swill
    before we leave this stinking sink and him.”

Allen Mandelbaum (1980):

And I: “O master, I am very eager
to see that spirit soused within this broth
before we’ve made our way across the lake.”

Robert Pinsky (1994):

    And I said, “Master, truly I should like
    to see that spirit pickled in this swill,

Before we've made our way across the lake.”

Robert Hollander and Jean Hollander (2000):

And I: “Master, I would be most eager
to see him pushed deep down into the soup
before we leave the lake.”

Robin Kirkpatrick (2006):

    “Sir,“ I replied, “this I should really like:
before we make our way beyond this lake,
to see him dabbled in the minestrone.”

Stanley Lombardo (2009):

And I said: “Master, I would really like
  to see this man dipped deep in the soup
    before you and I take leave of the lake.”

Kirkpatrick’s translation appears in Circles of Hell (2015), no. 25 in the Penguin Little Black Classics series. Is it wrong to think of minestrone as a ghastly novelty?

Thanks to 30 Squares of Ontario for the Sayers. My copy is ... somewhere.

Related reading
All OCA Dante posts (Pinboard)

Overheard

In a grocery aisle:

“Does my house smell like dogs? Anyone?”

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All OCA “overheard” posts (Pinboard)

Handwriting again

In The Chronicle of Higher Education, Katie Day Good, who teaches communications, argues for writing in class, by hand:

Handwriting accomplishes something greater now than ever before in education: It restores a sense of trust to the student-teacher relationship that has been shaken by AI. While I benefit from the renewed confidence that I can grade my students’ work with fairness and a clear view of what they know, students can feel relief, too, in knowing that they do not have to go to lengths to prove their humanity and authorship and that their peers are not using AI to cheat.

Related reading
All OCA AI posts : handwriting posts (Pinboard)

Music from 100 Years Ago

A worthy podcast: Brice Fuqua’s Music from 100 Years Ago. In truth, it’s music from the early to mid-twentieth century, with a theme to each episode. Most recently, “Born in New Orleans,” with recordings by Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Mahalia Jackson, Lonnie Johnson, Wingy Manone, Louis Prima, Sidney Bechet, and Blanche Thomas.

The host’s tastes are eclectic (I’ve heard Kay Kyser and King Solomon Hill, though not in the same episode), and if the brief commentary on each recording is sometimes a bit too obviously drawn from Wikipedia, well, Wikipedia can be a good place to start. Highly recommended.

A Molly Drake obituary

The New York Times has published an obituary for Molly Drake as part of its Overlooked No More series. (Gift link, with access to musical samples.)

Recently updated

Changeable signs Ephemeral New York looks into the long history of 306 Bowery.

Word of the day: locum

I saw it in spam, and then I saw it in a crossword. It must be following me. It’s “chiefly British,” says Merriam-Webster, a shortening of locum tenens.

From the Oxford English Dictionary entry for locum :

A person, esp. a cleric or doctor, who stands in temporarily for another of the same profession; a deputy, substitute; (now) spec. a medical practitioner employed to fill in temporarily for another who is absent; = locum tenens n.

A position as a locum or temporary substitute medical practitioner; = locum tenency n.

Locum tenens derives from post-classical Latin, “person who holds the place of another, substitute, deputy (frequently from 13th cent. in British and continental sources).” First citation: 1640.

The spam message invited me to serve as a locum. Patients, take warning!

Both things, many things

We had friends come to visit, and I’ve been mostly away from the news — but still reading Heather’s Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American every morning. From the latest installment:

Trump’s assumption of control over the Washington, D.C., police force and his calling out of the D.C. National Guard are definitely ways for him to divert attention from the Epstein files and the stalling economy. But they are also an attempt to create a dictatorship as Project 2025 prescribed. Both can be true at the same time.

I hear an echo of Nineteen Eighty-Four there.

Today’s installment also covers the Kennedy Center (still so named), Ghislaine Maxwell’s new prison, the grand jury files from her case, inflation and unemployment numbers, a new (and unqualified) commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, scrutiny of the Smithsonian Institution and its museums, and three spot-on tweets from Gavin Newsom.

Newman’s own

Thinking at home, jotting down a name at the office, turning that name into a snarky question, also at the office: it’s the Dixon Ticonderoga for young lawyer Tony Judson Lawrence, aka Paul Newman.

[From The Young Philadelphians (dir. Vincent Sherman, 1959). Click any image for a larger view.]

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Mental acuity

Part of a response to a question about sending the National Guard into Chicago, Los Angeles, and other American cities to fight (real or imagined) crime:

“But when I look at Chicago and when I look at, ah, LA, if we didn’t go to LA, three months ago, LA would be burning like the part that didn’t burn. If you would have allowed the water to come down, which I told them about in my first term, I said, 'You’re gonna have problems, let it come down.' We actually sent in our military to have the water come down into LA. They still didn’t want it to come down after the fires. But that was it, we have it coming down. But hopefully LA is watching. That mayor also, the city is burning, they lost like 25,000 homes. I went there the day after the fire, you were there, and I saw people standing in front of a burned-down home. It was — their homes were incinerated, they weren’t like, even the steel was, literally it was all warped, literally disintegrated because of the winds and the flame and the whole thingm like a blow torch. They were standing on this beautiful day, maybe a couple of days after. We gave it a little time because of what they had suffered. Almost 25,000 homes. And you see what’s happening now, they didn’t give their permits. I went to a town hall meeting I said we’re going to get you the federal permits, which are much harder.”

Related reading
All OCA mental acuity posts (Pinboard) [Via USA Today, with my slight changes to the transcription. Video at YouTube.]

“Beginning duck”

From The Far Side: “Beginning duck.”

Condimental

West of the Rockies: Best. East of the Rockies: Hellman’s. The distinction came up yesterday in conversation with friends, and all at once it hit me:

The Condimental Divide.

In 2019 I called a toll-free number to ask where to find the Best–Hellman’s dividing line. It was a genuine question.

“Kids on the Case”

An episode of the podcast Criminal : “Kids on the Case,” stories of kids solving or helping to solve crimes. Just like Ghostwriter — well, sort of.

Kids on Stillwell Avenue

[1993, 1991, 1989, 1987, 1985, and 1983 Stillwell Avenue, Gravesend, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click any image for a much larger view.]

I always like seeing kids get in these tax pitchers. For instance. For instance. And for instance. They must have brightened the work of the (still unidentified) WPA photographers.

[Back when it was standard practice to leave a baby in a carriage outside a store. Notice the ghostly onlooker — a mother? — just inside the store.]

[Click any image for a larger view.]

These buildings are still standing, storefronts below, apartments above.

An additional observation: it appears that when these photographs were taken, people had yet to understand the idea of dressing for the weather. Notice the range of clothing choices: from shorts to winter wear.

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

HCR on the idea of a “Christian nation”

From the latest installment of Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American:

The government of the United States of America is not, and never has been, based in Christianity. In his 1785 “Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments,” framer of the Constitution James Madison explained that what was at stake in the separation of church and state was not just religion, but also representative government itself. The establishment of one religion over others attacked a fundamental, unalienable human right — that of conscience. If lawmakers could destroy the right of freedom of conscience, they could destroy all other unalienable rights. Those in charge of government could throw representative government out the window and make themselves tyrants.

The United States of America is based not on religion but on the law. The country’s founding documents are the Declaration of Independence, which established the principle that all people are created equal, and the U.S. Constitution, which has gradually expanded since it was first written, increasingly recognizing the equal rights of all Americans.

I’d like to see these paragraphs in skywriting over Mary Miller’s Illinois family farm. Also over Delaware, where the farm is incorporated.

Related reading
A handful of posts about Mary Miller (R, IL-15) and Christian nationalism

The death of the concert review

At NPR Music, Ann Powers writes about the death of the concert review. An excerpt:

One major change in music writing since screens claimed our brains is the reduction of live reviews within every kind of publication and platform; this has particularly affected major newspapers, which for many years published dozens of reviews per week. Live reviews have actually been on the ropes for a while, an early victim of the internet’s disruption of news as a local thing. I started hearing that they’d been banished at least 15 years ago as part of media companies’ turn toward digital subscriptions; the question posed was, why would someone in Kansas want to read about a show in Manhattan? One could argue this was the start of a shift in news away from public service and toward consumer satisfaction — the model that makes puzzles and recipes the heart of financially successful publications today.

Puzzles and recipes: that sounds familiar.

I think it’s appropriate for anyone who cares about music to write (as well as they are able) about music they’ve heard. Sad: for many performances that Elaine and I have heard, what one or the other or both of us have written seems to be the only publicly available record of what transpired. Here’s an example, chosen at random.

Powers’ commentary came in the form of an e-mail with a subject line I like: “1,000 words or it didn’t happen.”

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Matthew Sewell, has something of a summery, rural flavor: 21-D, twelve letters, “Corn mazes, hayrides, etc.” And 40-D, seven letters, “Hit shows at county fairs.” Neither of which helped me much. What did help: 2-D, nine letters, “Reunion rendition.” Before hitting on that answer, I was, as they say in crosswords, ATSEA.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

4-D, twelve letters, “Metaphoric height.” Wow.

5-D, five letters, “Zebra crossing?” The rules of the road don’t help here.

11-D, five letters, “57-Across forerunner.” This answer brings back memories. (57-A, five letters, “Urban legend spreader.”)

14-A, four letters, “Rosetta Stone characters.” Pretty fiendish.

19-A, fifteen letters, “Pedestrian.” I’m not sure the clue is true to the answer, but I like the answer.

27-D, four letters, “Quick game.” Clever, but also yikes!

30-A, eleven letters, “Taking for a ride.” I wrote in the answer with nothing more than the last five letters without feeling that I was being taken for a ride.

39-A, eleven letters, “Sign of falling down on the job?” Heh.

46-D, five letters, “What ’our opposition ... don’t know how to handle’”: John Lennon. And it’s what we need now, though it’s not enough.

50-A, fifteen letters, “Model power source.” Crazy good!

50-D, four letters, “Name on the cover of Primary School Geography (1894).” My start, and I’m glad it was here.

61-A, four letters, “Banners of the Charleston era.” Early on I read this clue and thought I will never finish this puzzle.

My favorite in this puzzle: 48-A, six letters, “Real-time loggers.” Because my mom.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Wordle (whew)

[Today’s Wordle.]

Good luck to all!

[The misplaced letter is the same each time.]

A restless heart

Apollonius of Rhodes, Jason and Medea, trans. E.V. Rieu (1959).

Jason and Medea is no. 18 in the Penguin Little Black Classics series (2015).

Little Prince Vance

“I want my wivuh waised faw my boifday. Also, I don’t like how bwoo the sky is. Paint it wed. Now give me juicebox!”

Stephen Colbert debuted a new character last night, Little Prince Vance:

[Click for a larger, more disturbing view.]

Watch here. Context here.

These people merit all the mockery we can muster.

[My transcription.]

Eddie Palmieri (1936–2025)

Composer, bandleader, pianist. From the New York Times obituary: “One of his catchphrases was ‘I don’t guess I’m going to excite you with my band. I know it.’” Also from the Times: thirteen essential Palmieri recordings.

I can’t claim to have followed Eddie Palmieri’s career, but I can say that in 1974 or shortly thereafter, I bought The Sun of Latin Music, and at some point, “Nada de Ti” became my waking-up music. The Times list of Palmieri recordings describes it as “soothing.” You decide.

Pocket notebook sighting

[From From Headquarters (dir. William Dieterle, 1933). Click either image for a larger view.]

Dr. Van de Water (Edward Ellis) notices something about the fellow being questioned and checks his notebook.

(“Healthy scalp”?)

Related reading
All OCA notebook sightings (Pinboard)

[Edward Ellis is probably best known for his role in The Thin Man (1934).]

uBlock Origin Lite

This great adblocking extension is once again available for the Mac, the iPad, and the iPhone. Free, at the App Store.

Out of curiosity, I disabled every other adblocking extension on my Mac and found that uBlock Origin Lite does the trick all by itself. No ads on YouTube, not even ads that play with the option to skip.

[With Safari, you’ll need 18.6.]

Real life and cartoonists

[Nancy, August 6, 2025.]

Olivia Jaimes is being very meta today.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

Snappy patter

“Keep your pants pressed. I’ll do the worrying around here”: the creepy house pianist Eddie Morgan (Douglas Fowley) in Cafe Hostess (dir. Sidney Salkow, 1940).

Checks

The Gangster (dir. Gordon Wiles, 1947) is, as I wrote in this post, a super-stylish low-budget picture. Look what it does with a ceiling and floors.

At the soda fountain, Shubunka (Barry Sullivan) tears into cashier Dorothy (Joan Lorring), who looks down on him for his gangster ways: “I came up out of a sewer, out of the muck and mud: I came up by myself!”


And then he walks out.


His next stop will be “Club,” where someone is already waiting for him in the shadows:

[Click any image for a larger view.]

I would not be tempted to find in these images suggestions of a chessboard (upon which will be played a deadly game): I think these touches are meant to offer pure visual pleasure. The final image, an assemblage of shapes with a backwards CLUB, looks to me like something out of cubism.

Nighthawks?

[Barry Fitzgerald as Shubunka, Belita as Nancy. From The Gangster (dir. Gordon Wiles, 1947). Click for a larger view.]

It’s a low-budget picture, but a super-stylish low-budget picture. I have to think that someone in its making knew Edward Hopper’s painting Nighthawks.

An EXchange name in the rain

Jammey (Akim Tamiroff) already has reason to worry: another operator has taken over one of his numbers locations. And now someone steps from the shadows to hand him a note with a name, and an EXchange name.

[From The Gangster (dir. Gordon Wiles, 1947). Click either image for a larger view.]

EV can stand for only two things: EVergreen, and trouble.

Related reading
All OCA EXchange name posts (Pinboard)

Nancy and Sluggo: the later years

[“Nancy without Fritzi.” Zippy, August 5, 2025. Click for a larger view.]

In today’s Zippy , Zippy and Griffy ponder the later lives of Nancy and Sluggo. You’ll have to read Bill Griffith’s Three Rocks: The Story of Ernie Bushmiller, the Man Who Created “Nancy” for the full story.

Venn reading
All OCA Nancy posts : Nancy and Zippy posts : Zippy posts (Pinboard) : Three Rocks (My review)

On Louis Armstrong’s birthday

[“Jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong (R) greeting a cute little neighbor boy w. a gentle tap while walking along the street.” Photograph by John Loengard. Queens, New York, 1965. From the Life Photo Archive. Click for a much larger view.]

Louis Armstrong was born on August 4, 1901.

Related reading
All OCA Louis Armstrong posts (Pinboard) : Another Loengard photograph of Armstrong with neighborhood kids : And one more