Bob Dylan’s Nobel essay (again)

Ron Rosenbaum, writing about Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize essay:

It’s sad that this amazing essay has been almost entirely overlooked by Dylanologists, because it offers a skeleton key to something in my opinion quite essential about Bob Dylan.

The title of this book excerpt: “Bob Dylan’s Superpower Is That He Doesn’t Get Embarrassed.” No, he doesn’t.

The comments in the “amazing essay” about the Odyssey, Moby-Dick, and All Quiet on the Western Front bear unmistakable traces of CliffsNotes and SparkNotes. Andrea Pitzer’s 2017 article “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” offers ample evidence from the SparkNotes for Moby-Dick and cites one phrase about All Quiet on the Western Front from CliffsNotes. She also provides links for anyone interested in Dylan's practice of appropriation in music and painting. My modest contribution: a post in 2017 with what I see as clear evidence that Dylan plagiarized from the CliffsNotes for the Odyssey : “Dylan, Homer, and Cliff.”

Pretty pathetic stuff. You’d have to have a superpower to not be embarrassed by it. Or to ignore it.

Related reading
All OCA plagiarism posts (Pinboard)

[There’s ample room in art and music and writing for the use of found materials and for the transformation of preexisting works. But swiping from CliffsNotes and SparkNotes ain’t that.]

Orange pumpkin art

[“House in Horse Creek decorated for Halloween.” Photograph by Lyntha Scott Eiler. Horse Creek, West Virginia. October 5, 1996. From the Library of Congress. Click for a larger view.]

Happy Halloween to all who celebrate it.

Domestic comedy

“Are you awake?”

“Yes.”

“Me too. Do you know what time it is?”

“I just looked — it’s 6:08.”

“I’m ready to get up.”

“Me too. Is there a reason we’re still whispering?”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

Sludge

I subscribe to The Atlantic , but it took an episode of the podcast 99% Invisible , “Your Call Is Important to Us,” for me to notice this June 2025 newsletter piece by Chris Colin: “That Dropped Call with Customer Service? It Was on Purpose.”

The word for everything that makes customer service difficult for us customers, coined by Cass R. Sunstein and Richard H. Thaler: sludge.

Here’s a brief account of my trial by sludge in managing my mom’s long-term care insurance. I never begrudged a minute of it, but gosh, was it a lot of minutes.

And don’t get me started on United Healthcare.

[Steps away from the keyboard.]

Words of the year

From the American Dialect Society , slop : “The word slop was recognized for its widespread use for low-quality, high-quantity content, most typically produced by generative AI.”

From the Cambridge Dictionary , parasocial : “The term dates back to 1956, when University of Chicago sociologists Donald Horton and Richard Wohl observed television viewers engaged in ‘para-social’ relationships with on-screen personalities, resembling those they formed with ‘real’ family and friends.”

From the Collins Dictionary , vibe coding : “The term was popularised by Andrej Karpathy, former Director of AI at Tesla and founding engineer at OpenAI, to describe how AI enables creative output while he could ‘forget that the code even exists.’”

”From Dictionary.com, 67 : “Perhaps the most defining feature of 67 is that it’s impossible to define. It’s meaningless, ubiquitous, and nonsensical.”

[I’d style it as 6–7. The explanation our household has from an eight-year-old informant leans to “this or that.” Elaine remembered later today that she’s written a piece for practicing the sixth and seventh positions on the violin: “At Sixes and Sevens.”]

From Macquarie Dictionary, AI slop : “low-quality content created by generative AI, often containing errors, and not requested by the user.”

From Merriam-Webster, slop : “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.”

From Oxford Languages, rage bait : “With 2025’s news cycle dominated by social unrest, debates about the regulation of online content, and concerns over digital wellbeing, our experts noticed that the use of rage bait this year has evolved to signal a deeper shift in how we talk about attention — both how it is given and how it is sought after — engagement, and ethics online.”

My suggestion for 2025, which I chose when only 6–7 had been announced: slop.

I’ll add to this post as more words arrive.

A would-be crash blossom

[The Guardian, October 29, 2025.]

I want to call it a crash blossom, but it’s really an error in subject-verb agreement posing as a crash blossom. If that problem were fixed, there’d be a genuine crash blossom: should cuts cost be read as noun and verb, or verb and noun?

And what is it ?

C’mon, Guardian.

*

Later in the day: The headline now reads cuts cost: a genuine crash blossom. It is still unclear.

Related reading
All OCA headline posts (Pinboard)

An AI blog comment?

I suspect that I’ve received my first AI-generated spam comment, left on a post about two ways to know that you’re living in a small town. Here’s the post, from August 8, 2018, with a later addition:

One way to know you’re living in a small town: you recognize your neighbor’s little sports car in a TV commercial for a local auto shop.

*

August 14: Our neighbor knows about the commercial. But the car isn’t his. Someone else in town has the same little sports car, and my neighbor knows who. Further proof that I’m living in a small town.

And here’s the comment:

It’s funny how small towns make everything feel personal — even spotting a neighbor’s sports car in a local commercial! Just like keeping an eye on the details in town, it’s important to stay on top of your car’s health. For quick help with a failing battery, services like [link redacted] can get you back on the road without stress.

The link goes to a battery company in Dubai. As with the AI-generated response to my restaurant review, the comment makes too much use of what I wrote. It’s wildly inauthentic.

What’s the point of leaving such comments? A Dubaian looking for a new battery is not going to find one by finding my post. The idea (a feeble idea, to my mind) is to increase a website’s online presence via links. Alas, the people and, now, the machines dropping spam comments never seem to notice that Orange Crate Art uses comment moderation. Spam comments never show up online, at least not unless I want to make something of one in a new post.

Related reading
All OCA AI posts (Pinboard)

An AI restaurant response

How disheartening to leave a (rave) review of a restaurant and find that it’s received an AI-generated reply from “the restaurant.” How do I know the reply is AI? It reuses much of what I wrote in a way that no human respondent would.

An authentic reply might look something like this: Thanks! Or more expansively: Thanks! We look forward to seeing you again.

Related reading
All OCA AI posts (Pinboard)

Jack DeJohnette (1942–2025)

Drummer, pianist, composer. The New York Times has an obituary and an article with links to seven DeJohnette recordings.

I was fortunate to hear DeJohnette in 2013 at the Chicago Jazz Festival, where he assembled Special Legends Edition Chicago, with Roscoe Mitchell, Henry Threadgill, Muhal Richard Abrams, and Larry Gray. I wrote about that performance, which was released as the 2014 ECM recording Made in Chicago.

A related post
Jack DeJohnette on Muhal Richard Abrams (“He was always telling us, ‘Go to the library’”)

Nancy milk

[Nancy, September 1, 1949.]

Today’s yesteryear’s Nancy reminds me of what happened when I read a Charles Reznikoff poem to an elementary-school class. The poem mentioned “the clink of milk bottles” in the early morning, and the idea that milk could be delivered to someone’s house — in glass bottles no less — prompted many questions. As this panel might. That guy sure doesn’t look like he’s bringing something from Amazon.

With Olivia Jaimes having stepped away from the new Nancy, there are now two old Nancy strips every weekday: Nancy Classics and, uh, Nancy, both at GoComics.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

Word of the day: m’onderstanding

About “Low bridge, everybody down”: I said to Elaine yesterday that there should be a word like mondegreen to characterize a misunderstanding of a song lyric. Not a mishearing, a misunderstanding.

And she suggested m’onderstanding: a blend of misunderstanding and my understanding, with just a trace of mondegreen. It’s perfect.

Thank you, Elaine.

A billboard in Alton

“We chose this spot because we loved how the message would be seen by a whole lot of Congresswoman [Mary] Miller’s constituents, as well as folks from both Illinois and Missouri”: “Anti-trafficking group’s Alton billboard urges release of all Jeffrey Epstein files” (The Telegraph ).

In other Miller-related news, it’s Darin LaHood, not Mary Miller, who now appears to be the target in Illinois congressional redistricting (Punchbowl News ).

Related reading
All OCA Mary Miller posts (Pinboard)

[Alton, Illinois: a city on the Mississippi, birthplace of Miles Davis.]

Mental acuity

Answering a reporter’s question. Via Aaron Rupar. My transcription:

“They have Jasmine Crockett, a low IQ person. They have, uh — AOC’s low IQ. You give her a, an IQ test. Have her pass, like, the exams that I decided to take when I was at Walter Reed. I took, it's a very hard, they're really aptitude tests, I guess, in a certain way, but they’re cognitive tests. Let AOC go against Trump. Let Jasmine go against Trump. I don’t think Jasmine, the first couple of questions are easy, a tiger, an elephant, a giraffe, you know. When you get up to about five or six, and then when you get up to ten and twenty and twenty-five, they couldn’t come close to answering any of those questions.”

The current occupant is referencing is likely the Montreal Cognitive Assessment. Seth Myers: “If you take a dementia test and think it’s an IQ test, then I’m sorry to say you failed both the IQ test and the dementia test.” The Dunning-Kruger effect is glaringly apparent when the current occupant implies that identifying common animals is evidence of intelligence.

Someday (like today) a plucky reporter should ask: “It seems, sir, that you when you say ‘low IQ,’ you’re always referring to people of color. Why is that?”

From The Grio : “Crockett is a former civil rights attorney who graduated from the University of Houston Law School and Rhodes College. [Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez graduated cum laude from Boston University.”

Related reading
All OCA mental acuity posts (Pinboard)

IWTYO, Erie Canal edition

Heather Cox Richardson’s latest installment of Letters from an American is about the creation of the Erie Canal. Which made me think of the Erie Canal song “Low Bridge, Everybody Down.” Here it is, all the way from 1912, via the National Jukebox. Also all the way from a 1960s childhood.

I was today years old when I realized that “Low bridge, everybody down” has nothing to do with drawbridges being raised and lowered. It has to do with people ducking as they travel under — you guessed it — a low bridge. The sheet music shows a fellow ducking as he rides his mule along the canal. But it makes better sense, as this page about the song suggests, to think of the words in relation to people traveling on a boat. “Everybody”: there are a number of people being cautioned. Everybody duck!

Either way, nothing to do with drawbridges.

More IWTYO
Kasie DC and the meme : Esso : Tums

Honeycrisp apples, then and now

“An investigation into the Honeycrisp apple and how a complex string of events led to a decline in the quality of a beloved apple variety”: “How Honeycrisp Apples Went From Marvel to Mediocre,” by Jennifer Yam (Serious Eats ).

Our Honeycrisp apples (from Michigan, via Aldi) have almost always been terrific.

June Lockhart (1925–2025)

On earth or off, she was the greatest TV mother. The New York Times has an obituary.

The obituary quotes from a 2004 article about a lunch date with June Lockhart, Jon Provost, and HeyHey (a collie who played Lassie):

Here is a secret from those days, one that not even Ms. Lockhart knew when she was playing Ruth Martin: Some of the Lassie scripts came from writers who had been blacklisted after refusing to name names in the heyday of McCarthyism and the House Un-American Activities Committee.

She mentioned Adrian Scott, one of the Hollywood 10 who went to prison for contempt of Congress. His wife, writing as Joanne Court, attended story conferences and gave her husband notes so he could do rewrites. She also mentioned Robert Lees, who was listed in the credits as J.E. Selby....

“So when people come up to me and say, ‘Well, sure wish we had wonderful American shows like that the way we used to in the 50’s,’ I say, ‘Let me tell you who wrote those scripts,’” Ms. Lockhart said. “Yes, they were good Americans, and they were in jail.”

It ought not to be surprising that ProPublica is one of three organizations chosen for donations in June Lockhart’s memory. The others: the Entertainment Community Fund and Hearing Dogs for Deaf People.

Something that probably ought to be surprising: June Lockhart loved rock music. Parade reports that she took Billy Mumy and Angela Cartwright (both of Lost in Space ) to the Whisky a Go Go, threw a Halloween party with music by Hour Glass (a pre-Allman Brothers band with Duane and Gregg Allman), and regretted not getting to meet David Bowie.

I’ve been a Lassie fan from childhood’s hour, or half hours. The greatest June Lockhart-centric episode of them all: “The Big Cat,” in which Ruth Martin makes spare ribs, gets caught in an animal trap, communicates with Lassie by forming the letter C with her hand, and shoots and kills a cougar, all in less than twenty-one minutes.

Here’s what Jon Provost has written about his TV mother.

Bonwit Teller

[1–5 East 56th Street, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

That’s Bonwit Teller, at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 56th Street. Like the East Wing of the White House, it’s now gone. (Guess who!) Here’s the story, with ample documentation and the best photographs of the building’s bas reliefs I've seen. Those works of art are barely visible in this photograph.

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

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by David P. Williams, starts out so easily: 1-A, four letters, “Info_____ (Internet, from the German).” But by 5-A, four letters, “Tide that goes out in autumn,” things become more difficult. A satisfying Stumper, with nifty clues, novel answers, and very little awkwardness.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

7-D, three letters, “Letters on much guitar music.” This clue seems strangely arbitrary to me. The answer certainly isn’t specific to guitar music, as any fake book will show.

8-D, eight letters, “Hostilities.” Tricky, because the plural typically means “war” or “overt acts of war.”

9-D, nine letters, “Epicenter.” Getting this answer helped a lot, though it also brought back horrible memories.

14-D, letters, “‘Journey to _____’ (2000s Sesame Street segment).” Aww.

22-D, eleven letters, “Forecast fork.” The clue is more confounding than the answer.

23-A, thirteen letters, “Reeling.” Just fun.

25-D, nine letters, “What the Jasmine Revolution (2010) was part of.” I was thinking about it yesterday while watching Orwell: 2+2=5.

34-A, four letters, “Intro for a million gigs.” I couldn’t make “And now, ladies and gentlemen, it’s star time” fit.

37-A, five letters, “Shortened flights.” I thought my answer had to be wrong. I still don’t get it.

Now I think I get it.

38-A, thirteen letters, “Road to ruin.” It can be. We’re on one.

41-A, five letters, “Library lineup.” Nicely defamiliarizing.

50-D, three letters, “End of a Louis line.” My first thought was XVI. No, not that.

53-A, four letters, “First name of Hoorae Media’s founder.” A novel way to clue a name that often appears in crosswords.

My favorite in this puzzle: 15-A, ten letters, “Love tap?”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

The age of noir

[Strands, The New York Times , October 24, 2025.]

No spoiler: it’s yesterday’s puzzle. I saw FORMATION and thought I was doing a puzzle about human development. But no. I had to begin with what the Times calls a hint (it’s an answer, not a hint). And when this answer was revealed, I thought NOIR? That was Elaine’s first thought too when she did the puzzle and started with the same hint. We live in the age of noir.

[I opened Strands in another browser to go back and get this hint. I wasn’t savvy enough to get a screenshot before spelling IRON. I wouldn’t last long in film noir.]

A puzzle in signage

Seen on the side of a van parked outside a CVS:

SELF-PERFORMING FACILITY MAINTENANCE

Two guys were fixing the store’s automatic doors.

At first I thought the words on the van were self-contradictory: if the maintenance of the facility takes care of itself, why does anyone need to show up? Or one could parse the words as referring to the maintenance of a self-performing facility. But it’s difficult to think of automatic doors as a facility, self-performing or otherwise.

Here’s an explanation from within the industry:

Self-performing facility maintenance is different from hiring in a subcontractor network or outsourced maintenance partner in many ways. At MaintenX, we manage work orders and schedule services from one centralized location. This helps us to coordinate with clients, send the best technician for the job, and ensure that follow-ups are provided in a timely fashion.

And a related explanation:

Self-performing facility management companies complete the work themselves with their own staff and technicians. Under a self-performing model, the scheduling, work, and follow-up are all completed by the same organization.

Kinda odd to have such arcane phrasing on the side of a van. How about “WE DO IT ALL”? Or less obliquely: “YOUR ONE-STOP SHOP FOR MAINTENANCE.”

Mental acuity

In response to a question from Kaitlan Collins (CNN) about pardoning Changpeng Zhao, co-founder of Binance and key backer of the current occupant’s family’s own crypto effort. Video here. My transcription:

“Which one, who is that? The recent one, yes, the, uh? I believe we’re talkin’ about the same per — because I do pardon a lot of people. I don't know, he was recommended by a lot of people, a lot of people say that — are you talking about the crypto person? A lot of people say that he wasn't guilty of anything. He served four months in jail, and they say that he was not guilty of anything, that what he did — well, you don't know much about crypto. You know nothing about — you know nothin’ about nothin’. You’re fake news. But let me just tell you that he was somebody that, as I was told, I don't know him, I don't believe I've ever met him, but I've been told by, a lot of support, he had a lot of support, and they said that what he did is not even a crime. It wasn't a crime. But he was persecuted by the Biden administration, and so I gave him a pardon at the request of a lot of very good people.”

And there was a comment about Portland. Video here. My transcription:

“I mean I looked at, I looked the other night, Saturday night. Portland is like burning to the ground, and these people are saying it’s just friendly stuff. The whole place is burning to the ground. So we’ll, uh, take care of that one. That’s like an insurrection more than it is anything else. That, that’s crazy, Portland’s crazy. And then you listen to these radical left people talking about, uh, it’s really okay, you’re seeing things, you’re really seeing things.”

Related reading
All OCA mental acuity posts (Pinboard)

[Transcribed last night. As I discovered this morning, Heather Cox Richardson has a nearly identical transcription of the first comment.]

MSNBC, sheesh

A reporter reporting:

“Him and other Democrats already sent a letter....”

Pinboard
All OCA “sheesh” posts (Pinboard)

From the side of a carton

My daughter Rachel is inordinately amused, as am I, by carton of egg whites whose recipe for a fruit smoothie directs that the ingredients be added “in order top to bottom.” And adds that the recipe “makes 2.5 1 cup servings.”

[The people who wrote up this recipe may have studied at the Grand Academy of Lagado, where an architect builds houses from the roof down (Gulliver’s Travels ).]

COLD BREWSKI’S

[As seen in a supermarket.]

As I wrote in a 2022 post, “I don’t go looking for trouble. It finds me.” This sign, perhaps nine or ten feet wide, hangs above a giant walk-in cooler, unignorable, in your face. Or at least above your face.

I have alerted the Apostrophe Protection Society. And I’m not joking.

*

It didn’t occur to me until long after posting this photograph that Brewski’s could be a possessive — that this cooler is Cold Brewski’s Place. But to my eyes the apostrophe still looks wrong, or at least badly kerned.

Related reading
All OCA apostrophe posts (Pinboard)

Looking around

Two ways of thinking about the world right now:

I can find moments of beauty and happiness every day. But I cannot ignore the news.

I cannot ignore the news. But I can find moments of beauty and happiness every day.

For instance. Unembeddable, and likely worth 3:08 of your time.

A related post
George W.S. Trow’s advice

Pencil tributes

Left at the graves on Authors Ridge in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord, Massachusetts (Dreamers Rise).

Language devolving

The current occupant has often said that the people of the press “talk bad” and “write bad” about him. And now he has said that Gustavo Petro, the president of Colombia, has “a fresh mouth toward America.”

“A fresh mouth”! I don’t think I’ve heard that phrase since kidhood, when someone might have been accused of “talking fresh.”

“Ya got a fresh mouth on ya!”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah!”

I hear his language devolving.

The hand

[Click for a larger view.]

Above, an enlarged view of a detail from a photograph in today’s New York Times, where the camouflage goes unremarked. The current occupant appears to no longer feel the need to hide that hand. And why should he, if the press is not going to call attention to it?

Never no bottom

From The New York Times :

President Trump is demanding that the Justice Department pay him about $230 million in compensation for the federal investigations into him, according to people familiar with the matter, who added that any settlement might ultimately be approved by senior department officials who defended him or those in his orbit.

The situation has no parallel in American history, as Mr. Trump, a presidential candidate, was pursued by federal law enforcement and eventually won the election, taking over the very government that must now review his claims. It is also the starkest example yet of potential ethical conflicts created by installing the president’s former lawyers atop the Justice Department.

It’s tempting to say that now he's really lost what remains of his mind, but one of these complaints was lodged in late 2023 and one in the summer of 2024.

Unluckies

I walked into a bodega that sold loosies and bought two Lucky Strikes, the short unfiltered variety. I put them in my shirt pocket and thought that I should probably just buy a pack too. And then I walked out to the street before realizing that I hadn’t bought that pack.

I smoked my last cigarette a little over thirty-six years ago. And I still dream about cigarettes now and then. And though I’ve sometimes bought cigarettes in a dream, I’ve never smoked in one.

Related reading
All OCA dream posts (Pinboard)

[“Only fools and children talk about their dreams”: Dr. Edward Jeffreys (Robert Douglas), in Thunder on the Hill (dir. Douglas Sirk, 1951).]

Domestic comedy

[As yet another block of commercials interrupted a 30 Rock episode.]

“This is why we have phones.”

So we checked them. We were “working our sources,” just like CNN.

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

Look out, Mary!

“Republican Rep. Mary Miller’s downstate district appears to be the target”: there’s talk of congressional redistricting in Illinois (Politico ). O ye gods!

Related reading
All OCA Mary Miller posts (Pinboard)

David Frum on Stefan Zweig

Via The Atlantic. He’s talking about Zweig’s memoir The World of Yesterday (1943):

It occurred to me as I read this: If Zweig had just held on to his faith a little bit longer, Nazism was doomed. And although he would never get back the world of yesterday, he could have played an important part in building the role of tomorrow....

We all have to hold on, even when things seem despairing, because you never know that hope isn’t just a few months away and, in the deep dark you see, there’s already the glimmerings of the light of tomorrow. And that the world of yesterday can be a resource for the world of tomorrow. Don’t despair. Don’t quit.

The World of Yesterday is a book for these times. See, for instance, what Zweig had to say about the desire for order.

Related reading
All OCA Stefan Zweig posts (Pinboard)

Mel Brooks on John Candy

“He was a great actor who stuck acting in his back pocket and behaved like a human being”: Mel Brooks, in John Candy: I Like Me (dir. Colin Hanks, 2025).

Twelve movies

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers. Sources: Amazon Prime, TCM, YouTube.]

Jealousy (dir. Gustav Machatý, 1945). From the director of Ecstasy, and a great YouTube find. Jane Randolph of Cat People plays Janet Urban, an Angeleno married to an alcoholic émigré writer (Nils Asther) unpublished and unemployed in America. Janet’s work as a cab driver leads to a friendship with a dashing doctor (John Loder), and she soon finds herself in two love triangles, with her husband, the doctor, and the doctor’s assistant (Karen Morley). The dialogue is sometimes wooden — “I have a strange feeling of foreboding” — but odd camera angles and disorienting montages make this a far from ordinary low-budget movie. ★★★ (YT)

*

Always Goodbye (dir. Sidney Lanfield, 1938). Margot (Barbara Stanwyck) stands at the edge of a pier, ready to give up on life after the death of her fiancé, when she’s comforted by good-natured, unassuming Jim (Herbert Marshall), who works as a veterinarian. Margot is pregnant, and what follows is a story of the conflict between love and duty, as Margo gives up her child, only to have to choose years later between Jim and her child’s adoptive father (Ian Hunter). Stanwyck and Marshall are excellent as a shy, tentative couple. The one strike against the movie: too much of it is given up to Cesar Romero as an insufferable ladies’ man, whose (comic?) shtick soon gets old. ★★★ (YT)

*

Confidential Agent (dir. Herbert Shumlin, 1945). It’s 1937, and the agent is Luis Denard (Charles Boyer), who’s come to London to negotiate a purchase of coal for the Republican government in Spain. The last time I watched this movie I thought of it as looking back to The 39 Steps and ahead to Dark Passage. This time I saw as looking back to The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca. With Lauren Bacall as a helpful goddess; Katina Paxinou, Peter Lorre, and Dan Seymour as no-gooders; and James Wong Howe as cinematographer extraordinaire. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Uncertain Glory (dir. Raoul Walsh, 1944). Like Confidential Agent, another winner from the Brothers Warner. Errol Flynn is Jean Picard, a Parisian criminal awaiting execution; Paul Lukas is Marcel Bonet, the police inspector who finally tracked Picard down. When Resistance forces destroy a bridge and the Nazi occupiers prepare to execute a hundred men unless the saboteur is found, Picard proposes to turn himself in as the saboteur and save a hundred lives. With a brief love affair (Picard and Jean Sullivan as a shopgirl), a deepening friendship of sorts between the two male leads, and danger everywhere. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

I Was an Adventuress (dir. Gregory Ratoff, 1940). I suspect that the title was meant to be recognized as slightly preposterous. Erich von Stroheim and Peter Lorre are Andre and Polo, a pair of crafty jewel thieves — almost romantic partners, really (Polo recites “for better, for worse,” and so on). The third person in their schemes is Countess Tanya Vronsky (Zorina), a ballerina who decides to give up crime when she falls in love with a man who was to have been one of the trio’s victims. Funny stuff, with some nice plot twists, and George Balanchine (then married to Zorina) as an orchestra conductor. ★★★ (YT)

*

The Man Who Played God (dir. John G. Adolfi, 1932). Bizarre, and still more bizarre when one learns that the 1912 short story that furnishes the plot was the stuff a play (1914), two silents (1915, 1922), and still later a movie starring Liberace (1955). George Arliss plays Montgomery Royle, a celebrated pianist who loses his hearing when a saboteur’s bomb explodes during a performance. Monty is saved from despair when he makes a new life scanning Central Park from his balcony, lipreading the conversations of visitors to the park, and finding ways to help them. Arliss is one strange-looking leading man: he’s sixty-four here, with lipstick and bad teeth, playing a man of fifty who has a young Bette Davis in love with him. ★★★ (TCM)

[See what I mean?]

*

Gangway for Tomorrow (dir. John H. Auer, 1943). Five defense-plant workers carpooling to work tell their stories in flashbacks: a singer who worked with the French Resistance; a race-car driver, injured and ineligible for military service; a former prison warden; a former Miss America; and a former hobo. Hokum, sure, but in 2025 such hokum can be appealing: it’s the hokum of a country in which everyone has a part to play and steps up to do so. Or almost everybody: did the filmmakers even consider adding a non-white character to the car? John Carradine, Margo, and Robert Ryan are the familiar faces here. ★★★ (YT)

[Margo was Latina, but here she plays a Frenchwoman. Nicholas Musuraca’s cinematography adds a star.]

*

I, Jane Doe (dir. John H. Auer, 1948). A Republic Pictures version of the so-called woman’s picture, with surprisingly high production values. The improbable story centers on a French civilian (Vera Ralston), an American pilot (John Carroll), and the pilot’s wife (Ruth Hussey). The story begins with a murder (there’s no doubt about whodunit) and moves both backward and forward from there. Though Hussey gets top billing, Ralston (not skating) is the emotional center, expressing great pathos, often without saying a word. ★★★ (YT)

*

The Second Woman (dir. James V. Kern, 1950). Architect Jeffrey Cohalan (Robert Young) lives an ultra-modern house with a painting of his dead fiancée; Ellen Foster (Besty Drake) lives in a spooky mansion with her aunt. The two meet by chance and a courtship begins, but Jeff meets up with one piece of bad luck after another: a statue breaks; a horse breaks a leg; a dog dies; crucial blueprints go missing. Who or what is behind it all? A variation on Rebecca, predictable in some ways but not in others. ★★★ (YT)

*

The Beast of the City (dir. Charles Brabin, 1932). The opening intertitle, with words from Herbert Hoover about “implacable support” for policing in “our great cities,” is jarring in 2025, but the targets here are top-tier gangsters. Walter Huston plays an uncorruptible police chief; Wallace Ford is his corruptible detective brother; Jean Hersholt is the chief gangster; Jean Harlow is a seductress. There’s considerable talk of greasy gangsters and greasy lawyers, and the chief rages about a gangster having killed “one of the finest white men that ever lived.” Pre-Code, with Harlow’s dancing and an insanely violent ending. ★★★ (TCM)

*

Street of Chance (dir. Jack Hively, 1942). Mild-mannered Frank Thompson (Burgess Meredith) is knocked to the sidewalk by falling construction material, and he comes to on that same sidewalk with someone else’s initials on his cigarette case and on the sweatband of his hat. And then he finds that his wife (Louise Platt) has moved out of their apartment; there’s a new woman (Claire Trevor) in his life; and an unknown man (Sheldon Leonard) is pursuing him for an unknown reason. From a novel by Cornell Woolrich, it’s truly Kafkaesque, at least until there’s an explanation. Adeline De Walt Reynolds steals the movie without saying a word. ★★★ (YT)

*

John Candy: I Like Me (dir. Colin Hanks, 2025). A portrait of a kind, generous, funny man who lived with considerable inner torment: “You don’t know what I have in my head,” Dave Thomas recalls him saying. The documentary is made of family photos, home video, clips from SCTV , movies, and interviews, and countless reminiscences, from Candy’s wife and children and from friends in the art: Dan Aykroyd, Mel Brooks, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin. Steve Martin, Catherine O’Hara, Martin Short, and too many more to name. The comic moments are, of course, hilarious, but there’s real pathos too: I think you can see Candy hold back tears when interviewers ask him idiotic questions about his weight. Best moment: Catherine O’Hara recounts a dream in which she asks Candy why he had to die and he asks why she had to bring that up. ★★★★ (AP)

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

No Kings, NYT

[The New York Times, National Edition, October 19, 2025. Click for a larger view.]

Short shrift on the front page of The New York Times : the story of yesterday’s protest doesn’t even make it above the fold. The story itself appears on page 22. The front page of the City Edition gives No Kings the same short shrift (story on page 23), with photographs from Golden, Colorado and Boise, Idaho replacing the ones from Arlington National Cemetery and New York City seen here. Was someone confused about which photographs were to appear in which edition?

The front page of the International Edition has nothing about No Kings, though as you probably already know, there were No Kings gatherings yesterday in many other countries.

The paper’s coverage of the current occupant’s recent air journey is oh so tactfully addressed. The headline:

Trump Posts Fake Video of Himself Flying a ‘King Trump’ Jet Over Protesters

The full story begins to leak in the subhead:

President Trump shared what appeared to be an A.I.-generated video on social media. It shows Mr. Trump wearing a crown and flying a jet that dumps brown liquid on demonstrators.

And then in the article itself, something closer to the truth gushes out:

The fake video, set to the song “Danger Zone” by Kenny Loggins, shows the plane dropping a brown liquid resembling feces onto the heads of protesters, who appeared to be gathered in a city.

“A brown liquid resembling feces”? Really? Must we hedge?

And it’s not the plane that’s dropping “a brown liquid resembling feces” on the heads of protesters (who are, yes, gathered in a virtual city). It’s the current occupant who is dropping shit on us all.

I like this advice

“Glimpse genuine joy, in a way, in the middle of world horror”: George W.S. Trow to Alison Rose, quoted in The New York Times obituary for Rose.

In the Golf Ball District

[20–22 Stone Street, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Wandering Lower Manhattan, I stopped in the Golf Ball District. This little corner building puts me in mind of the imaginings of the artist Ben Katchor. Let us imagine that people came to the Golf Ball District from far and wide, “from other neighborhoods and other districts,” as Jane Jacobs would have said, to buy their golf balls. Well, maybe. If you click for the much larger view, you’ll see that this business sold other items too.

I like the way the streetlight splits SO from DA on the restaurant signage below. Time to eat da lunch!

As for the name on the wall: Charles F. Noyes was a real-estate broker. His name turns up in two other tax photographs I’ve posted: 1, 2. Noyes brokered the sale of the Empire State Building in 1951. And it appears that he was a golfer.

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

Nancy, NO ICE

[Nancy, December 28, 1944. Click for a larger view.]

Elaine found a version online. As the happy custodian of Fanatagraphics’s three volumes of Nancy dailies, I scanned a clean copy.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

[In the missing panels, Sluggo wonders if the lake surface is hard enough for skating, and Nancy tests with a stick. They’ve just left school — thus the book bag.]

No Kings Day in east-central Illinois

The count today: ~600 people lining one side of the largest park in our smallish town. As in June, when ~500 people showed up, the crowd skewed older, but not as old. I counted one dragon, one dinosaur, one Minuteperson, one tube man, and two handmaids. Many people honked and cheered from passing vehicles. One motorist honked and gave us the finger: yo, get your signals straight, sir.

Did I mention that it was raining? It was raining. The rain started not long after Elaine and I arrived, and soon it poured. We were not deterred. I don’t think anyone was. Columbia rain jackets FTW! Ot just get wet.

[Still waiting on my check from June, Mr. Soros. Show me the money!]

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Ben Zimmer, is a dilly, a doozy, a real humdinger. If those items in a series aren’t adequate, I’ll add that it’s also Something Else. I started the puzzle late last night, got about halfway, and went back to it this morning with fresh eyes. And rethinking one answer that I had wrong — 7-D, three letters, “Olympic flag bearer at the Vancouver opening ceremony” — made everything else fall into place, answer after answer.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

1-A, five letters, “Earliest leader of Thebes.” Why didn’t the right answer fit? Oh, because I’m doing the Saturday Stumper.

1-D, seven letters, “Pitching impediments.” Nice!

2-A, eight letters, “Somewhat stronger ‘Right on!’” I typed these words yesterday, instead of something even stronger.

5-D, five letters, “What a spot check takes care of.” A great repurposing of an everyday phrase.

8-D, ten letters, “Kind of soup as a starter?” Clever.

9-D, six letters, “Swift production of the 18th century.” Kinda obvious, but it pairs well with 21-D.

13-A, seven letters, “Flurry of phraseology.” I was sure the answer was PALAVER until I rethought 7-D.

13-D, seven letters, “Pedagogic payees.” I had no idea before getting 13-A. The word mystified me when I was in college. Why didn’t I think to look it up?

15-D, ten letters, “Utterly exhaust.” Hah!

21-D, eleven letters, “Swift production of the 21st century.” Kinda obvious, but it pairs well with 9-D.

31-D, eight letters, “Multiply.” I suspect that the clue was meant to Stumpify the answer, but I don’t think it’s a good fit.

24-A, nine letters, “Common late-spring mag recommendation.” I was thinking maybe a magazine for brides.

44-A, three letters, “‘I can be viewed without special formatting.’” I’m a fan.

45-A, four letters, “Off the _____ (top-of-mind, not surprisingly).” Recent slang, I think, though it sounds like something from a 1930s movie.

48-A, eight letters, “Pizzeria purchase.” A Coke and a slice don’t fit.

My favorite in this puzzle: 26-A, five letters, “Nickname of a mound or music great.”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Mental acuity

The current occupant, speaking about Nicolás Maduro to a room full of reporters:

“He’s offered everything. You’re right. You know why? Because he doesn’t want to fuck around with the United States.”

His filters are broken.

Related reading
All OCA mental acuity posts (Pinboard)

Sock it to ’em, JB

JB Pritzker, today, addressing the current occupant and Stephen Miller:

“Illinois is not a place you can conquer, and our people are not your subjects.”

Hell yeah!

[Post title courtesy of Rex Garvin and the Mighty Cravers and the Specials.]

There are signs and then there are signs

I wince when I see photographs of well-meaning younger people carrying protest signs produced by the Party for Socialism and Liberation. Black and yellow signs: if you’ve seen them, you know the ones I mean.

Wikipedia has detailed article outlining the PSL’s political positions, with copious documentation. The PSL supports the Communist Party of China and the Workers’ Party of North Korea. The PSL supported the Assad regime and the Russian annexation of Crimea. It blames NATO and the United States for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And so on. You can search the group’s online newspaper and see what it has to say about places and events of your choosing.

If the PSL’s politics are your politics, by all means carry a PSL sign on No Kings Day. But you won’t be standing for democracy and freedom in doing so.

*

I should add: A.N.S.W.E.R. is closely affiliated with the PSL. Look for the black and yellow signs.

Olivia Jaimes’s final thoughts about Nancy

And her other characters, in sketch form (The Daily Cartoonist ).

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

No Kings Day coming

Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884/1885).

No, only an aspirant. In the words of Robert De Niro, “Fuck that.”

This Saturday, find a gathering of like-minded people near you.

[Quotation reposted from July 4, 2024 and February 17, 2025. UK publication: 1884. US publication: 1885.]

Dinner and a show

At the White House, dinner and a show for wealthy donors to the ballroom. The show, such as it was, was the streaming of a diminishing consciousness. From The New York Times  (gift link):

In a meandering speech that shifted from details of the ballroom — bulletproof windows and a capacity of 999 people, among them — to a description of his foreign policy agenda, Mr. Trump told the audience that he expected the project to be completed under budget. He also suggested that some attendees had offered to pay more than $20 million for the ballroom.

“So many of you have been really, really generous,” Mr. Trump said. “I mean, a couple of you, I was sitting here and saying, ‘Sir, would $25 million be appropriate?’ They said, ‘I’ll take it.’”

And a comment:

Richard W. Painter, who served as the chief ethics lawyer in the White House Counsel’s Office under President George W. Bush, said in an interview that Mr. Trump’s dinner for the corporate executives “shows what the ballroom is really all about: pay to play.”

“Getting an invitation to the White House to a dinner because they’re contributing to the construction of this project,” Mr. Painter said. “This is payment for access, not just to the grounds of the White House but access to the president of the United States.”

Adam Kinzinger on that GOP group chat

About that group chat: Adam Kinzinger says that “The GOP’s Young ‘Leaders’ Aren’t Kids — They’re Adults Praising Hitler.” An excerpt:

When you strip away the excuses, what you see in those messages isn’t immaturity — it’s indoctrination. It’s a group of self-described “patriots” using memes and shock jokes to normalize fascism and racism. And when a sitting U.S. Vice President like JD Vance rushes to dismiss it all as “boys being boys,” he’s not just minimizing it — he’s endorsing it. He’s saying, “We’ll look the other way, as long as you’re on our team.”

Let’s be clear: these “boys” are not boys. The Young Republicans’ age range is 18 to 40. These are adults — grown men and women with jobs, influence, and in many cases, aspirations for public office. They can vote, serve, lead, and shape the culture of a political party that already has a dangerous authoritarian streak. So when their private conversations are filled with “I love Hitler” posts and racist filth, it’s not just youthful stupidity—it’s a window into the moral vacuum that the GOP has cultivated. These are the foot soldiers of a movement that worships power and cruelty, not character or compassion.

One person on the chat, Michael Bartels, works in the White House. And he still has his job.

A fellow graduate of P.S. 131

While trying to learn something about a Manhattan tax photo yesterday, I learned something wholly unrelated: Robert Elliott Burns (1892–1955), the author of I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang! , was a graduate of the elementary school I would attend some sixty years later:

[“‘Fugitive’ Author Arrested in Jersey: R. E. Burns, Who Escaped Twice From Chain Gangs, Seized on Request From Georgia.” The New York Times, December 15, 1932.]

Burns, who was coerced into participating in a small-time robbery in Atlanta, escaped from Georgia chain gangs twice. This Times article followed his second escape. The brother mentioned in the excerpt above was Vincent G. Burns (1893–1979), a Congregationalist minister who in 1929 spoke on his brother’s behalf in a bid for clemency after the first escape and recapture. The second escape took place while the bid for clemency was under consideration.

Did our principal know about Burns, his book, and the movie made from it? Did our teachers? Were they keeping quiet, or did they not know about the man who must be the school’s most famous graduate?

I watched I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (dir. Mervyn LeRoy, 1932) in 2022 and described it as “Pre-Code Warner Bros. moviemaking with an emphasis on social justice, exposing the utter brutality of chain-gang life. Ninety years later, it’s still strong stuff.” Paul Muni starred.

An aside: P.S. 131 was built between 1900 and 1901, so the brothers must have begun their schooling elsewhere. Their childhood home was roughly a half-mile from P.S. 131: down 50th Street to Fort Hamilton Parkway, then six blocks over to the school. My brother and I had a much shorter walk to school: our family lived next door.

Related reading
All OCA P.S. 131 posts (Pinboard) : Robert Elliott Burns (Wikipedia) : On the fiftieth anniversary of Burns’s death (Prison Policy Initiative)

Words and other words

If you play the online game Nomido, in which you form words from two-letter bits (which can overlap), you will find that everyday words are often not recognized as valid answers: AM + MO = nothing. But trying random sequences of two-letter bits and overlapping two-letter bits can bring you to victory. AMMONAL and AMMONALS for the win.

[Farfetched words almost always make Nomido tedious. But it’s there, which means I often have to try. No spoilers: these words are from a few days ago.]

“Songs in the Park”

[By me.]

I found this poem, circa 2006, while looking through an old thumb drive. Not bad, says I.

From a Liquid to a solid

At the Mac site TidBITS, Adam Engst offers tips to turn Liquid Glass into a solid interface, with numerous screenshots to show the effects of changing one or more settings in macOS, iOS, watchOS, and tvOS.

Thinking about Liquid Glass reminds me that it was the impending arrival of Windows Vista that prompted me to switch to a Mac. I think I’m going to be sticking with macOS Sequoia for some time. But I’m also hoping that further Glass updates will turn it into an operating system that I can be happy with. I’m sure not switching to a Chromebook.

Necking

“The president’s neck is fully dilated and effaced”: Stephen Colbert, a couple of minutes ago. He also dropped Georgia O’Keeffe’s name.

This morning I held myself back from calling it “a bag-like structure.” It’s the new androgyny.

A related post
“My hair!”

Single malt what?

[Dustin, October 14, 2025. Click for a larger view.]

Helen’s doing her radio show. The topic is coping with stress. Monday’s caller suggested ice cream. Today’s caller says that he remembers “three simple words.” I hope he’s not talking about Scotch.

From Garner’s Modern English Usage (5th edition, 2022):

whisky; whiskey. If the liquor originated in Scotland, Canada, or Japan, it’s whisky. If it originated in the U.S., it’s whiskey <Kentucky whiskey>. To write *Scotch whiskey is a serious gaffe in the eyes of a Scot. In both AmE and BrE, however, the spelling Irish whiskey has predominated over Irish whisky since about 1950.

I will toot my own horn (softly, with a Harmon mute on) and add that Canada and Japan were two of my smaller suggestions as a member of the panel of critical readers for the 2022 edition of GMEU.

[I think single-malt makes more sense, but the Google Ngram Viewer shows single malt , no hyphen, as eight times more common.]

A joke in a neo-traditional manner

From a very young comic:

Where do you go to lose your car and rest your feet?

No spoilers: the punchline is in the comments.

More jokes from the very young
Another joke in a neo-traditional manner : One more joke in a neo-traditional manner : A joke in a non-traditional manner

A building and an arch

In the most recent installment of Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson writes about the destruction of a building and the creation of an arch:

Since taking office in January 2025, officials in the second Trump administration have made war on the vision of government embodied by the Social Security Act, promoting in its place a return to the rugged individualism that is even less true today than it was a century ago.

Now the administration is getting rid of the building built to house the Social Security Administration, along with the murals that champion the government’s role in protecting the equality and security of ordinary people, while Trump contemplates building a triumphal arch, carving MAGA ideology into the nation’s capital in stone.

[I began reading this installment much earlier this morning and had to give up for a while. It’s all too much. Too much, too much.]

“My hair!”

I want to thank the current occupant for calling attention to an unflattering photograph of him on the cover of Time. I may not have know about it otherwise.

He has complained about the way the photograph depicts his hair. I think most people looking at this photograph would be noticing what appears further down, above the collar. Got the ick?

[“My hair!”: see O Brother, Where Art Thou?, another narcissist’s saga.]

Great Lives : Derek Bailey

A surprising episode of the BBC Radio 4 program Great Lives, with the comedian Stewart Lee nominating the guitarist Derek Bailey. The episode begins with Matthew Paris, the show’s host, offering a lengthy explanation of the great variety of lives under discussion and how they’re chosen. It’s as if he’s preparing the audience for something out of the ordinary, or out of the ordinarily “great.”

Near the end of the episode, after a short clip of Bailey playing an improvisation titled “To Be Arranged,” Paris likens the music to what a chimpanzee might produce if given a guitar.

Lee replies:

Matthew, this is such an idiotic thing to say, really. A chimpanzee doesn’t even have the fingernails to play to make that sound, right? You’re better than that, right? You know, you really are, and you can’t give a program like this over to an artist like that and then throw that kind of stuff at them, not with the reading you’ve done and the interviews you’ve heard of him. You’re on the BBC, right? You’ve got to meet the challenge of a culture that is failing artists and failing the public in terms of exposing them to good stuff, and you mustn’t put that idea out there. You have to double back on it. And the duty of a broadcaster is to support stuff, not to undermine it.

Lee adds that to invoke a chimpanzee is to fall into cliché: “At least say an octopus or a wasp or something, for God’s sake.”

Paris says his only duty is to offer his honest response. I suppose he’s right, but he would have done better to offer a more intelligent honest response: “Stewart, I have to admit that I have no idea what he’s doing. But I take it that he does. Am I right?”

Or something like that. You can hear the musical sample and the conversation that follows beginning at the 26:00 mark.

A second musical sample: the opening of “Laura,” from an album of standards that Bailey recorded late in his career. “I could hear a little bit,” Paris says about this one. “This may be a problem with my bandwidth.”

Derek Bailey’s musicianship isn’t my idea of the guitar, but I respect what he was doing and know that he knew what he was doing.

King Records documentary

“From James Brown’s soul to the Stanley Brothers’ bluegrass, King Records shaped genres that still echo today”: a well-made documentary about Syd Nathan’s Cincinnati record label, King of Them All: The Story of King Records, streaming at PBS.

[But were the crowd sounds on Live at the Apollo dubbed? I’ve read both yes and no.]

Orwell: 2+2=5

From PBS News Weekend : William Brangham interviews Raoul Peck about his documentary Orwell: 2+2=5. You can watch the trailer for the film (theaters only) at YouTube.

Related reading
All OCA Orwell posts (Pinboard)

HCR on this day

In the most recent installment of Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson writes about the meanings attached to the second Monday in October:

As society changes, the values we want to commemorate shift. In the 1920s, Columbus mattered to Americans who opposed the Ku Klux Klan because celebrating an Italian defended a multicultural society. Now, though, he represents the devastation of America’s Indigenous people at the hands of European colonists who brought to North America and South America germs and a fever for gold and God. It is not “left-wing arson” [a phrase from this year’s presidential proclamation] to want to commemorate a different set of values than the country held in the 1920s.

What is arson, though, is the attempt to skew history to serve a modern-day political narrative. Rejecting an honest account of the past makes it impossible to see accurate patterns. The lessons we learn about how society changes will be false, and the decisions we make based on those false patterns will not be grounded in reality.

And a society grounded in fiction, rather than reality, cannot function.

Chock full o’Signs

[48 John Street, Man, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

I was wandering around the Financial District, not sure what I was looking for. And then I found this cluster of signs. And a Chock full o’Nuts. I like the uniform pricing: Doughnuts Sandwich Frankfurter 5¢. The Nickel Store.

Broun-Green: printers. I went to the trouble of looking them up before noticing their smaller sign. Loufré Buffet: a chain of cafeterias. Trepel’s: a chain of florists.

Just west of these establishments (to the right in this photograph) stood (and stands) the John Street Methodist Church, the oldest United Methodist Church in the United States. The four-story building that housed Chock full o’Nuts is gone. Today there’s a small paved park that I would guess belongs to the church. The massive building that housed Trepel’s is known as the Manhattan Business Center, housing private businesses and city agencies.

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

Diane Keaton (1946–2025)

The New York Times has an obituary.

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Matthew Sewell, begins: 1-A, three letters, “Octane Booster brand.” Is it really going to be this easy? Not quite. But it is a highly doable and satifying Stumper. I’d call it a genial Stumper. See 33-A, fifteen letters, “Smiley-like Martian landmark.”

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

3-A, ten letters, “Cicero’s ‘true mother of the arts.’” Always happy to see any reference to it.

7-D, eight letters, “Of 3-D surface math.” Cool.

8-A, four letters, “Discontinued docker.” When I see discontinued and a short answer in a crossword, I automatically think SST. Not relevant here.

10-D, four letters, “He helps Anna find Elsa.” One of many things I know because of granddaughters.

13-A, five letters, ”Cross hairs.” Tricky.

16-D, letters, “Entry gate, e.g.” An unusual answer.

18-A, fifteen letters, “Corporate disincentives.” Not sure how I know this term, but I do.

20-D, ten letters, “Monthly writing.” My first thought was of a recurring bill, but who still writes checks for those?

22-A, three letters, “Time of Eugene O’Neill.” Not what you (or I) might first think.

26-D, ten letters, “ls turned off, in dating slang.” Is this expression from the same generation that faults people for being judgy? Just asking.

46-A fifteen letters, “Emulates rappers.” Pretty sneaky.

58-A, four letters, “Keeps from drifting off.” One of the things I most like about Stumpers is the way ordinary answers turn more interesting via their clues.

My favorite in this puzzle: 14-D, four letters, “Plot adversary, or plotting adversary.” See 58-A.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Alcove, niche, nook

[From Google’s Ngram Viewer. Click for a much larger, readable view.]

In 1949, when this Nancy strip appeared, alcove was nearing the height of its popularity, with niche and nook on the wane. I think Nancy avoided any possibility of controversy by saying “the new place for our phone.”

Guitar blossoms

Two years and a month ago, I heard the great Brazilian guitarist Yamandu Costa in east-central Illinois. I had followed his playing for years on YouTube but owned only one CD. I bought all seven CDs for sale after the performance — a 700% increase in my collection. The digipaks and cardboard sleeves all bore an unmistakable floral fragrance that I thought must have come from something else in a suitcase.

Two years and a month later, the digipaks and cardboard sleeves still have a trace of that fragrance.

At the end of a long walk this morning, Elaine and I passed a woman walking two pups. And I recognized this woman’s fragrance. Should I ask about it? Or not? I began with a caution: “This is going to sound like a crazy question,” and gave a condensed version of the paragraphs you’ve just read.

The answer: Japanese Cherry Blossom lotion, from Bath & Body Works.

My follow-up question: Is it a really long-lasting fragrance?

Yes.

Case solved.

And it turns out that my informant is visiting from Wisconsin and is planning to attend the Holiday Folk Fair International back home in November. Many musical traditions there, but no Yamandu Costa, at least not this time. If he were performing there, I think that’d push this story into the realm of fiction.

Related posts
Yamandu Costa in Illinois : Costa, Guerriero, and Sued : “Lamento Sertanejo”

[Could some other product have been the source of the fragrance on my CDs? Of course. But the fragrances past and present match.]

The Nobel Peace Prize

From The New York Times (gift link):

The Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, who built a powerful social movement challenging the country’s authoritarian president and has been living in hiding since last year, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday. The Norwegian Nobel Committee praised “her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.”

Off to the engine factory

I was one of several American high-school exchange students in Russia, but instead of going to school, we were sent to work in an engine factory where they took away our phones. One by one, my peers disappeared, until only two of us remained. The only way out was to feign illness. We wouldn’t want to make the other workers sick, would we?

I take this dream as a sign of our times.

Related reading
All OCA dream posts (Pinboard)

[“Only fools and children talk about their dreams”: Dr. Edward Jeffreys (Robert Douglas), in Thunder on the Hill (dir. Douglas Sirk, 1951).]

“Antifa” then and now

From the most recent installment of Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American. The subject is an “Antifa roundtable” with the current occupant of the White House and various conspiracy theorists:

“Antifa” is a term used by the far right to define anyone who does not support MAGA: it means “antifascist.” During the meeting, influencer Jack Posobiec — a proponent of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory — warned that “Antifa” went back all the way to Germany’s Weimar Republic. As Holly Baxter of The Independent pointed out, “it is absolutely true that there were anti-fascist protesters in the Weimar Republic. If you’ll remember, those were the people taking issue with the early versions of the Nazis.”

Here’s a link to the Holly Baxter article. I haven’t seen this detail reported elsewhere.

[At the risk of pointing out the obvious, there is no organization called Antifa. I’ve added quotation marks to the first word in the quoted passage.]

A telephone alcove or nook

[Nancy, August 17, 1949. Click for a larger view.]

Today’s yesterday’s Nancy features what’s usually called a telephone alcove or nook. Or, as I now know, niche.

A catalogue speaks: “The telephone nook is a convenience and an item of millwork well worth considering.”

Raise your hand if you’ve ever been in an apartment or house that has one.

[Raises hand.]

No thanks, I’m good

Something new in Blogger, news of which I found on the OCA dashboard this morning:

**Try our New Beta Features**: Create a more engaging reading experience with the help of Google

Google Search links: Based on your blog content, Blogger will automatically identify key words and phrases in your post and insert Search links in case your readers want to explore more. In Compose View, Look for the ‘Pencil’ icon on the top-right of the page to get started.

Uh, no thanks.

There’s no announcement of this “feature“ on the Official Blogger Blog, whose last post appeared in May 2020.

Pam Bondi’s notes

A photographer zoomed in.

Mental acuity

Found via Aaron Rupar and Aaron Rupar:

“I don’t know what could be worse than Portland. You don’t even have stores anymore. They, they don’t even put glass up. They put plywood on their windows. But most of the retailers have left.”

And:

“Have you given any more thought to possibly suspending habeas corpus,” &c.

“Yeah, suspending who?”

And no one present challenges him — or laughs.

Related reading
All OCA mental acuity posts (Pinboard)

Mystery actor

[Click for a larger view.]

Do you recognize the conductor? I’ll drop a hint in advance: the conductor was not a conductor. Nor was he known as an actor. But he was known for a long career in the arts.

Leave your guess(es) in the comments. If it seems appropriate to drop another hint, I’ll do so later this morning, before I cut the grass for the first time since August 17. (We’re in D2 territory: Severe Drought).

*

Another hint: think dance.

*

The grass is cut; the patches in the lawn are reseeded; and the answer’s now in the comments.

Related reading
All OCA mystery actor posts (Pinboard)

Let there be at least some light

After nothing but blazing sun and temperatures in the nineties and eighties, yesterday was the first day in a long time of what my mom would have called gloomy doomy weather. Nothing but grey. Time to turn on the Verilux.

My only connection to Verilux, Inc. is that of a happy (or at least a bit happier) customer.

Thank you, Governor Pritzker

JB Pritzker goes, as they say, there. From the Chicago Tribune:

In a scathing critique of President Donald Trump, Gov. JB Pritzker on Tuesday accused the Republican president of deploying National Guard troops to the Democratic cities of Chicago and Portland based on fixations that stem in part from his being mentally impaired.

“This is a man who’s suffering dementia,” Pritzker said in a telephone interview with the Tribune. “This is a man who has something stuck in his head. He can’t get it out of his head. He doesn’t read. He doesn’t know anything that’s up to date. It’s just something in the recesses of his brain that is effectuating to have him call out these cities.

“And then, unfortunately, he has the power of the military, the power of the federal government to do his bidding, and that’s what he’s doing.”

The current occupant is now calling for the governor and Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson to be jailed for failing to protect ICE agents.

Billie Holiday at Storyville

Unembeddable: from October 1953, a radio broadcast from Storyville, George Wein’s jazz club, housed in the Copley Plaza Hotel, Boston, with Billie Holiday, accompanied by Carl Drinkard, piano; Jimmy Woode, bass; and Peter Littman, drums. Extraordinary musicianship, extraordinary sound quality.

The songs: “I Cover the Waterfront,” “Too Marvelous for Words,” “I Love You, Porgy,” “Them There Eyes,” “Willow Weep for Me,” “I Only Have Eyes for You,” and “You Go to My Head.”

Times are hard. Add some music to your day.

Related reading
All OCA Billie Holiday posts (Pinboard)

MAGA no more

Adam Kinzinger talks with George and Esmeralda Doilez, MAGA supporters until they were stopped by Border Patrol agents. I have to agree with what Kinzinger writes:

It’s easy to say, as some have, “well you should have known.” Some people’s realities and circumstances differ from ours. What matters is welcoming pro-democracy people into our midst.

Watch the video of the stop and think about whether it depicts a country you want to live in. Then listen to the conversation.

Failing to meet the moment

At Techdirt, Mike Masnick says that “the mainstream media is catastrophically failing to meet the moment.” An excerpt:

When reporters feel compelled to add “experts say” to basic mathematical facts [the impossibility of lowering drug prices by 1500%] or treat war crimes [blowing up boats] as matters of legitimate debate, they’re not being neutral — they’re actively misleading their audience into believing basic facts are up for debate among “experts.”

The pattern is clear: mainstream media has become so terrified of appearing biased that they’ve abandoned their basic responsibility to clearly communicate truth to the public. They’d rather hide behind the false comfort of “some say” and “experts disagree” than plainly state obvious facts. This isn’t objectivity — it’s cowardice. And it’s precisely why trust in media continues to crater.

VDP on Brian Wilson

I bought the one copy of the September Brian Wilson issue of Mojo in the rack at Barnes & Noble. (There no copies last month.) Here is Van Dyke Parks speaking to music journalist Sylvie Simmons:

I knew that Orange Crate Art was my last studio album at Warner Brothers. The thing is, I wanted to know how Californians would say the word “orange” so l could write the song. So I went to see Brian to see how he’d say it. He was in a place on a sliver of earth between the cliffs and the roar of the sea. I was directed to his room in the small place — his psychologist was in the big place — and there was Brian, looking at a television that wasn’t on. And I said to myself, I owe this man something. So I got him in the studio. Cut to the chase, he’s standing in front of the microphone and then he stopped everything. He asked me, “Why aren’t you singing?” I said, I’m sorry, Brian, I just don’t like the sound of my own voice. And he said, “I don’t blame you.” (Laughs ) In the studio, he had the ability to bring out the best in everyone. That made him a person of great personal appeal. His death was merciful. He is now liberated from all that dark and dismal tragedy.

If you’re wondering: Van Dyke sings /ˈär-inj/. Brian sings /ˈȯr-inj/. Both sound right.

Venn reading
All OCA Van Dyke Parks posts: Van Dyke Parks and Brian Wilson posts : Brian Wilson posts (Pinboard)

Orange supplies

At Lexikaliker, Gunther has assembled a remarkable array of pens and pencils in orange. Also, one eraser and a pair of scissors. Beautiful supplies, beautiful photograph.

Related reading
All OCA orange posts (Pinboard)

Current events

Lisa Needham, at Public Notice:

The Trump administration’s war on cities just entered a new, more terrifying phase. What stage of fascism is it when the president defies a court order and sends troops into a city anyway? Because as of Sunday, that’s where we’re at.

Tina Kotek, governor of Oregon:

When the president and I spoke yesterday [September 27], I told him in plain language that there is no insurrection or threat to public safety that necessitates military intervention in Portland or any other city in our state. Despite this — and all evidence to the contrary — he has chosen to disregard Oregonians’ safety and ability to govern ourselves. This is not necessary. And it is unlawful. And it will make Oregonians less safe....

Oregon is our home — not a military target.

JB Pritzker, governor of Illinois:

This evening [October 5], President Trump is ordering 400 members of the Texas National Guard for deployments to Illinois, Oregon, and other locations within the United States. No officials from the federal government called me directly to discuss or coordinate.

We must now start calling this what it is: Trump’s Invasion. It started with federal agents, it will soon include deploying federalized members of the Illinois National Guard against our wishes, and it will now involve sending in another state’s military troops.

I call on Governor Abbott to immediately withdraw any support for this decision and refuse to coordinate. There is no reason a President should send military troops into a sovereign state without their knowledge, consent, or cooperation.

The brave men and women who serve in our national guards must not be used as political props. This is a moment where every American must speak up and help stop this madness.

And for the delusional thinking that prompts these efforts: “Am I watching things on television that are different from what’s happening?” (Press Watch ).