No turkey

[223 and 221 Bowery, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

It’s the restaurant window that caught my eye. Click and read the Fuerst Brothers’ menu: everything but turkey. And everything but a diamond robbery.

See also the tax photograph of the Pioneer Restaurant and Berenice Abbott’s photograph of the Blossom Restaurant.

No. 221 still stands. No. 223, now 225, has been reduced to one story. as Google Maps will show.

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

Today’s HCR

“As Trump’s popularity continues to drop, the MAGA coalition shows signs of cracking, and Trump’s mental acuity slips, there is a frantic feel to the administration, as if Trump’s people are trying to grab all they can, while they can”: the latest installment of Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American should be required reading.

The wheels are coming off, but they’re like the wheels on a car in a James Bond movie. As they spin away from the car, their blades come out to destroy whatever they can.

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Matthew Sewell, is good fun, and easy for a Stumper. But I have no time to write it up this morning.

One of many clue-and-answer pairs I admired: 10-D, eight letters: “Serial port users.” No spoiler here; the answer is in the comments.

[Why is the word template in the URL? Because I was unable to delete it from the post title on my phone. Grr.]

“Early blogger energy”

“I still look for people with early blogger energy, though — people willing to make an effort to understand the world and engage in a way that isn’t a performance, or trolling, or outright grifting. Enough of them, collectively, can be agents of change”: Elizabeth Spiers, “Requiem for Early Blogging.”

So it was, back in the day and, still today. Early or late, early blogger energy.

“Unnoticed by the average eye”

From Edith Wharton, “Mrs. Manstey’s View” (1891), in The Reckoning (Penguin, 2015).

“Mrs. Manstey’s View” was Wharton’s first published story. I’ve reinstated the period that Penguin removed from the title.

This volume is no. 48 in the Penguin Little Black Classics series.

Thanksgiving 1925

[“Thanksgiving Santa Gives Friends Apples.” The New York Times, November 24, 1925.]

This Times article appeared two days before Thanksgiving 1925. Happy Thanksgiving 2025 to all.

Twelve movies

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

Heat Lightning (dir. Mervyn LeRoy, 1934). One of the last pre-Code movies, with the distinction of being condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency. From a play by Leon Abrams and George Abbott, it observes the unities of time and place, moving from one morning to the next at a gas station/café in a blazingly hot southwestern desert. But plot goes all over the place: with the two sisters who run the gas station (Aline MacMahon and Ann Dvorak), two sharp-dressed men passing through, two wealthy divorcees, also passing through, and assorted others. Sex, gunplay, gasoline, and water included. ★★★ (YT)

*

The Great Jewel Robber (dir. Peter Godfrey, 1950). Based on the career of Gerard Dennis, who stole from the rich and famous. Eddie Muller’s intro made me think that I was going to see a genteel thief at work. But David Brian’s Dennis is a brute — well, whatever does the job. The most interesting point about this movie is that every character is a double-crosser: it’s a world in which trust is folly. ★★★ (TCM)

*

Blackout (dir. Terence Fisher, 1954). Dane Clark plays Casey Morrow, an American in London, who meets with an extraordinary proposition while in a bar, drunk: a beautiful blonde woman, Phyllis Brunner (Belinda Lee), will pay him £500 to marry her. The next morning Casey finds himself in a strange apartment with blood on his overcoat, and a newspaper headline tells him that Phyllis’s father has been murdered. This confusing story reminded me of The Big Sleep, with one complication leading to another, and no clear indication of how our hero is able to figure everything out. Best moment: Casey tells good old Maggie Doone (Eleanor Summerfield) that he guesses he’s up to the task of playing private eye: “I’ve seen enough movies.” ★★★ (CC)

*

Blackout (dir. Robert S. Baker, 1950). A Londoner, Chris (Maxwell Reed), temporarily blinded in an accident, ends up at a wrong address, finds a dead body on the floor, and is knocked out (not killed) by the still-present killers when they realize that they have not been seen. When Chris regains his sight, he sets out to find whodunit and to whom. This improbable story isn’t helped by Chris’s utter foolhardiness (hint: at least get yourself a gun when you go out hunting for killers). Filmed on location, with good glimpses of mid-century England. ★★ (YT)

*

Eleven P.M. (dir. Richard Maurice, 1928). A writer with an 11:00 p.m. deadline (Louis Perry) is at work on a story when he falls asleep. The movie seems to be the content of a dream in which a street musician (Maurice himself) attempts to protect an orphaned girl. This film would pair well with Cat People, or even with Eraserhead. It’s a truly strange moment in Black American film, in silent film, in film. ★★★ (CC)

*

Blind Spot (dir. Robert Gordon, 1947). Jeffrey Andrews (Chester Morris), an alcoholic writer of psychological novels that don’t sell, comes up with a brilliant plot for a moneymaker — a locked-room murder mystery that he shares with several listeners, including his no-good publisher. When the publisher is found dead in his locked office, Andrews is in a jam: prone to drunken blackouts, he can’t remember his story, who heard him tell it, and whether he committed murder. Good low-budget noir, with a nice reference to The Lost Weekend and, as in the later Sunset Boulevard, the slightly overwrought dialogue and voiceover narration of a “writer”: “After ten years on coffee and donuts, my ego is calloused.” Constance Dowling adds considerable interest to the story as the alluring, New York-accented Evelyn Green, Andrews’s dangerous partner in hiding out from the cops. ★★★ (TCM)

*

Howard Hawks at the Criterion Channel

The Criminal Code (1931). We realized early on that we had seen the remake, Convicted. Here Phillips Holmes is the fine young man (hereafter, the FYM) sent to prison; Walter Huston is the benevolent warden; Constance Cummings is the warden’s daughter, improbably on the premises; and Boris Karloff is the FYM’s feral cellmate, bent on avenging an old wrong. The question that hangs over the story concerns the FYM: will he follow the criminal code or keep to the straight and narrow? Huston is the star, but Karloff steals the movie. ★★★

Only Angels Have Wings (1939). Cary Grant and Jean Arthur star, but I think of it as an ensemble movie in which everyone gets a turn: Richard Barthelmess, Rita Hayworth, Sig Ruman, &c. The setting: the all-in-one world of a small air freight company flying mail through the Andes, with sleeping quarters, restaurant, and bar. It’s a deeply homosocial world of loyalty and selflessness and something close to kinship: The Kid (Thomas Mitchell) calls Geoff Carter (Grant), the company’s manager, Papa (Grant was twelve years younger). Jean Arthur’s traveling singer Bonnie Lee is a complication for Geoff (ditto Rita Hayworth): witness the extraordinary scene in which Bonnie asks Geoff why she can’t love him as The Kid does. ★★★★

*

Pacific 231 (dir. Jean Mitry, 1949). The movie title is the name of a variety of steam locomotive and the title of a composition for orchestra by train-loving composer Arthur Honegger. Jean Mitry turns Honegger’s Pacific 231 into a score for a wild, intense ride. Quick glimpses of wheels, tracks, steam, and countryside, as a train makes its way from a rail yard to a station. Anthony Frewin, assistant to Stanley Kubrick: “Stanley said Pacific 231 was one of the most perfectly edited, if not the most perfectly edited films, he had ever seen.” ★★★★ (YT)

*

Daybreak Express (dir. D.A. Pennebaker, 1953). Pennebaker’s first film, in which Duke Ellington’s 1933 recording “Daybreak Express” (variations on “Tiger Rag”) becomes the soundtrack for a ride on the soon-to-disappear Third Avenue El. A beautiful, exhilarating montage of people, tracks, stations, cityscapes, darkness, and light, and even a good glimpse of a car’s interior, complete with a placard for Winston cigarettes. Restarting the recording midway is a clumsy choice (just make a shorter movie!), and the roller-coaster effect at the end seems at odds with the plainer beauty of everything that precedes it. But still! ★★★★ (CC)

[The interior. Notice too the placards advertising Mounds and Almond Joy (“Indescribably delicious!”) and Pine Bros. cough drops. Click for a larger view.]

*

The Station Agent (dir. Tom McCarthy, 2003). The owner of a model-train shop dies, leaving to his lone employee Finbar McBride (Peter Dinklage) a plot of land in rural New Jersey on which sits a defunct train station. Fin, a man with dwarfism, resolutely solitary, moves into the station, intent on a life of reading, with occasional walks along the right of way (i.e., railroad tracks) to a convenience store for necessities. But he finds friendships developing, with Joe (Bobby Cannavale), who’s minding a coffee and snack truck for his father, and Olivia (Patricia Clarkson), an eccentric painter and terrible driver who almost runs Fin over, twice. Like Smoke (dir. Wayne Wang, 1995), it’s a movie about chance meetings and the wonders they can bring. ★★★★ (AP)

*

The Perfect Neighbor (dir. Geeta Gandbhir, 2025). A documentary made almost entirely from police body-cam footage. The story (which is known from the movie’s start) is heartbreaking: Susan Lorincz, an older white woman, living alone, calls 911 repeatedly about the neighborhood kids, mostly Black, playing and making noise, allegedly on her property, and that same woman ends up shooting through her own door and killing Ajike Owens, a Black mother of four, who comes to confront Lorincz about her behavior. One police officer can be seen and heard saying the single word “Psycho” to another officer after responding to yet another a 911 call from Lorincz, and it doesn’t take special training to see that she is, in some way or ways, deeply disturbed, devoid of empathy, delusional, narcissistic (“perfect neighbor” is her self-description), with a deep racist streak to boot. But nothing ever came of that officer’s “Psycho,” and if ever there was a story to make the case for bringing mental-health professionals into the work of policing, this movie tells it. ★★★★ (N)

Related reading
All OCA “12 movies” posts (Pinboard)

Towne Branch subdivision

[Click for a larger tree.]

I photographed this tree — I call it the Towne Branch subdivision — in 2020 and 2022 and again in 2023 and 2024. In 2025 Towne Branch continues to be popular with established families and first-time homebuyers. Close to schools, shopping, and public transportation (power lines). This week I counted seven squirrel nests, the highest number yet. It’s difficult to see them all from any given angle, but if you click for big and squint, they’re there.

Related reading
All OCA squirrel posts (Pinboard)

Origin of an idiom: “That takes the cake”

From Robbie Banks’s Crime and Punishment and Popcorn: The Language of Gangster Movies (1993):

Most idioms and slang expressions of 1930s gangster cinema have fallen by the wayside, but some persist in contemporary speech. A case in point: “That takes the cake,” an idiom first recorded in the 1931 Frank Capra movie I Was Made Into a Criminal, a vehicle for Paul Mooney.

An aside: the film's title created a storm of objections from grammar enthusiasts who decried what they deemed its awkward, inelegant use of the passive voice. The outcry in print and on radio was so great that the film was pulled from theaters just two days after its release. In 1932 Capra remade the movie as They Made Me a Criminal, with James Cagney starring. “You dirty rat,” Mooney said to Capra in the RKO commissary upon learning of the remake. I shall take up that expression in a later chapter.

In the 1932 film, Cagney’s character Yankee Doodle hatches a plan to break out of prison. He and his cellmates struggle to wear down and cut through the bars of their cell with inadequate tools: screwdrivers and sandpaper stolen from the prison machine shop. It’s finally left to Doodle to declare that more drastic measures are needed. “How’re we ever gonna do it, Doodle?” Sneaky Pete (George F. Stone) asks. “Boys, that’s gonna take the cake,” Doodle declares. In other words, a visitor to the prison must bring in a cake with a file hidden inside. That responsibility goes to Doodle’s wife Mae (Mayo Methot).

Even in this pre-Code effort, an escape from prison is doomed to fail, with Yankee Doodle, Sneaky Pete, and Piano Sam (Dooley Wilson) gunned down by guards. As the movie ends, the camera moves in on Cagney, face contorted in agony, as he clutches his breast and cries out, “Mother of Mercy, is this the end of Doodle?” It was.

But it was not the end of “That takes the cake.” Thy Made Me a Criminal was a box-office sensation, and the idiom quickly caught on. Today, it still signifies the need for some more powerful or drastic measure to achieve success in a given endeavor — even if that endeavor is, like a movie prison break, doomed to fail.

More origins
“At loose ends” : “A low bar” : “Don’t cry over spilled milk” : “Let the cat out of the bag” : “Lightning in a bottle” : “The wind at our backs” : 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.]

Thinking about the button

“We have to know how to be present”: Alan Alda, in an episode of Clear+Vivid with Michael J. Fox, recorded in 2018, now updated and available from the usual services. When this conversation was recorded, Fox had been living with Parkinson’s for twenty-seven years; Alda, for three. Alda goes on to say,

“That idea of being in the present, which we practice is actors: we have to know how to be in the present. It’s really helpful in a situation like this. All I’m dealing with right now is getting the cuff of my shirt buttoned. I'm not dealing with what this can turn into, or what a sign it is that I’m not the way I used to be. I'm not thinking about the past or the future; I’m just thinking about the button right now.”

“Exactly,” says Fox.

[My transcription.]

Today’s xkcd : “Fifteen Years”

Like “Seven Years” and “Ten Years,” today’s xkcd, “Fifteen Years,” is likely to bring tears.

A song for today

H - A - double-L - I - G - A - N spells Halligan.
She tried to get both James and Comey,
Her rabid boss’s mouth is foamy.
H - A - double-L - I - G - A - N, you see,
Is a name now in shame, ignominy is her game,
Halligan, that’s she!

Related reading
“Judge Tosses Criminal Charges Against James Comey and Letitia James” (The New York Times ) : “Harrigan”

An album against AI

It’s called Is This What We Want? :

More than 1,000 musicians have come together to release Is This What We Want?, an album protesting the UK government’s proposed changes to copyright law.

In late 2024, the UK government proposed changing copyright law to allow artificial intelligence companies to build their products using other people’s copyrighted work — music, artworks, text, and more — without a licence.

The musicians on this album came together to protest this. The album consists of recordings of empty studios and performance spaces, representing the impact we expect the government’s proposals would have on musicians’ livelihoods.

The album’s twelve tracks: “The,” “British,” “Government,” “Must,” “Not,” “Legalise,” “Music,” “Theft,” “To,” “Benefit,” “AI,” “Companies.” Those tracks streamed in February. The vinyl LP has a thirteenth bonus track: a recording of an empty studio from Paul McCartney. Point made.

Proceeds go to the UK charity Help Musicians.

Related reading
All OCA AI posts (Pinboard)

Jimmy Cliff (1944-2025)

Singer, songwriter, actor. The New York Times has a stub of an obituary.

Burt Meyer (1926–2025)

Among his inventions and collaborations: Lite-Brite, Mr. Machine, Mouse Trap, Pretty Pretty Princess, and Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots. In our fambly, Pretty Pretty Princess serves three generations. The New York Times has an obituary.

In the typewriter district

[130 West 23rd Street, Chelsea, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Above, Gramercy Typewriter Company, in what Jay Schweitzer, grandson of the company’s founder, says was once known as the typewriter district. Look closely at the lower left corner, and you’ll another typewriter establishment. Gramercy is now the sole typewriter repair shop in Manhattan, still doing business at 108 West 17th Street.

[Straightened. Click for an even larger view.]

[From the 1940 Manhattan directory.]

Look below the Gramercy sign: West 23rd Street seems to have also been in the waterproof-novelty district.

[Popular Mechanics, June 1917. This ad and other bits in Google Books lets me understand that waterproof novelties are items made of waterproof fabric. Novelty : “a small manufactured article intended mainly for personal or household adornment → usually used in plural” (Merriam-Webster).]

Thanks, Brian, for pointing me to Gramercy and to this tax photograph.

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

[This post replaces an earlier version that I put online by accident.]

Woodstock’s into

[Peanuts, November 25, 1978. Click for a larger view.]

Yesterday’s Peanuts is today’s Peanuts. Yesterday’s colloquialism is today’s colloquialism.

The first citation in the Oxford English Dictionary for this use of into — “interested or involved in; knowledgeable about” — is from Rolling Stone, January 28, 1969: “I tend to like the stuff the rock groups are doing because they're creative and original, and that's something I'm very much into.”

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by Rafael Musa. It’s his first. It’s a fine puzzle, leaning more toward ambiguity and indirection — e.g., 4-D, four letters, “Bed makeup,” 40-D, seven letters, “What may have multiple levels” — than toward trickiness.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

6-D, nine letters, “Layered indulgence.” I was thinking of a cake.

8-D, seven letters, “Varsity Tutors offering.” My starting point. Only one possible answer, thought I.

9-D, ten letters, “Silver accessories.” Hah.

12-D, three letters, “What might precede a ceiling.” An inventive way to clue these three letters. But to pick a nit: they should really be four.

13-A, nine letters, “All-encompassing space fiction concept.” New to me, but then I don’t know space fiction.

17-A, nine letters, “Modern missive.” Everything old is new again.

19-A, thirteen letters, “Focus time.” Having the last four letters via down answers made the rest of the answer obvious.

30-A, nine letters, “Raising expenses.” No question mark?

33-D, nine letters, “Many Helsinki ferry patrons.” I think I’ve seen these travelers in a previous puzzle, but I did not see them making their way to the boat here.

34-A, five letters, “Ring to reach.” Clever. My first thought was BRASS.

43-A, six letters, “Whom many a doctor charges.” As they probably should, at least in some cases.

50-D, five letters, “Put up or in.” A great clue redeems a familiar answer.

52-A, thirteen letters, “Succeed through the straight and narrow.” A nice way of twisting the answer’s usual meaning.

53-D, four letters, “Lacking a charge.” Okay, here’s some misdirection.

57-A, nine letters, “Gifts with bells and whistles.” A wonderful clue.

59-A, nine letters, “Focus times.” A callback with a difference.

60-A, five letters, “Illustration introduction.” My one quarrel with this puzzle. The answer is really about something else.

My favorite in this puzzle: 24-A, nine letters, “Drill bits?”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Class discussion, my 2¢

Here’s a statement about discussion that I had on my syllabi, everything in it running counter to the idea that responding to a question in a classroom is a matter of having “the answer”:


That shortened link goes to an OCA guest post by my friend Stefan Hagemann about how to answer a professor’s question.

[I liked to make one-page syllabi, three columns on each side, a format I learned about from reading Edward Tufte. Compact, beautiful, and highly readable. When my university began to require that syllabi include boilerplate text about “learning objectives,” I had to go to two pages.]

AI and answers

College Matters, a podcast from The Chronicle of Higher Education, host Jack Stripling and Chronicle writer Beth McMurtrie talk about AI in higher education “Using AI Without (Really) Cheating.” It’s a remarkably cheerful conversation, focusing on the thoughtful ways students are using AI — to make self-quizzes, outlines, summaries, all in the cause of greater efficiency.

I’ll quote something I wrote this summer:

Using AI to generate an outline or essay isn’t accelerating learning — it’s accelerating the creation of a product to turn in for a grade. And if you’re using AI to do your thinking for you, your destination may not be one you anticipated or, perhaps, even recognize upon arrival.

One comment from McMurtrie that I found especially noteworthy and saddening concerned a study by professors at University College Dublin. I’ve added color:

What the researchers came away realizing is that students were using tech out of the sight lines of their professors in a lot of ways. For example, students would say, if a professor threw out a question in class, one of them might put it into ChatGPT, get the answer, put it into a WhatsApp group chat, and then everybody in the class would see what ChatGPT said should be the answer to that question. And then somebody might, you know, deliver the answer. Chances are the faculty member had no idea that was happening. They just knew that when they threw the question out to the class, there was probably some silence and then someone might raise their hand. Some professors did notice also that fewer students are asking questions in class. And, again, it’s that they could look down at their phone, plug in any question they might have in the moment and then get the answer from AI. So in a lot of ways it is changing the immediacy of the connections in the classroom.

What an impoverished way to think about conversation in a classroom. I cannot (literally cannot) imagine a scenario in which a question hangs in the air while someone types into a phone, finds and sends out the answer, and someone else speaks it. Questions should be occasions for thought. And it’s reasonable to wonder: if you’re relying on AI, how do you know that the answer is even a valid one?

I’m with Professor Kingsfield, though without the hauteur: “You will never find the correct, absolute, and final answer.” But there are absolutely wrong answers. Yesterday, Google AI told me that Plato’s Apology is a novel. Try for yourself.

Related reading
All OCA AI posts (Pinboard)

Typewriter repairers in the news

“We stuck with what we knew best, and are still thriving today”: NY Jewish Week visits Gramercy Typewriter Company, the last typewriter repair shop in Manhattan. With an Instagram reel. See also this 2015 visit from Medium.

“I think this might be it”: The New York Times profiles Paul Lundy, who found his life’s new work repairing typewriters in Seattle: “How to Fix a Typewriter and Your Life.”

Related reading
All OCA typewriter posts (Pinboard)

Backblaze, anyone?

Here’s a referral code that gets you (and me) three months free if you buy at least one license for the backup service Backblaze:

https://secure.backblaze.com/r/022uub

The offer expires on December 31.

I switched to Backblaze from Mozy in 2018 and have never had a problem. Set it and forget it, as they say. An initial backup takes some time: if you’ve never backed up the contents of a hard drive, the end-of-year quietude is an especially good time to start.

What’s news

“Tonight, the severe weather threatening right now,” &c. Thus NBC Nightly News begins. Not one political story teased in the intro. On ABC World News Tonight new footage of the recent UPS airplane disaster is first. The current occupant’s threats against members of Congress is the second story.

Recently updated

“SEDITIOUS BEAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” Now with headlines from The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Guardian. Consider how each reports the news.

“Punishable by DEATH!”

“SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” The current occupant is deeply, deeply disturbed. If he were in a care facility, his family would be getting a call right now.

*

The story has made it to The New York Times and The Washington Post. The Times headline:

President Calls Democratic Lawmakers “Traitors” Over Video to Military

The call for the death penalty appears in the first paragraph.

The Post headline:

Trump: Democrats “traitors” for telling military not to follow unlawful orders

The subhead:

The president said lawmakers who appeared in a video committed “seditious behavior” and should be arrested and put on trial for treason.

The Post doesn’t mention the call for the death penalty until the tenth paragraph of the article’s twenty paragraphs.

For contrast, consider the Guardian headline:

Democrats condemn Trump after he says they should be punished ‘by death’ over video post

And the subhead:

Trump called group of lawmakers ‘traitors’ over an X video of them urging military members to refuse illegal orders

Who’s doing the best job of reporting this news?

Joe Brainard’s “C” comics

“Brainard’s energetic line and joyful humor charge across every page, illustrating [Frank] O’Hara's recasting of a cowboy as a mash-note-writing lover, [Ron] Padgett’s experiments with traditional cartoon sound effects (ROAR! GRRR! SKREE!), cameos by Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy, and heaps of Dadaesque delights.” From New York Review Books: Joe Brainard, The Complete C Comics.

Related reading
All OCA Joe Brainard posts (Pinboard)

[“C” Press, and “C”, so styled: Ted Berrigan’s small press and mimeo magazine. Some background here.]

Ethan Iverson’s piano picks

An instant reference work in the form of a Substack post: Ethan Iverson’s “The Greatest Jazz Piano Albums of All Time.”

Mental acuity

The current occupant, speaking today at the U.S.–Saudi Investment Forum. Via Aaron Rupar (my transcription):

“Interest rates are down despite the Fed. Uh, I mean, Scott, you gotta work on this guy, he’s got some real mental problems. [Points to his head.] No, there’s something wrong with him. It’s juss, it’s ridic — I’ll be honest, I’d love to fire his ass. He should be fired. Guy’s grossly incompetent, and he should be sued for spending four billion dollars to build a little building. I’m building a ballroom that’s gonna cost a tiny fraction of that and it’s bigger than the whole thing put together. You gotta work on him, Scott. The only thing Scott’s blowing it on is the Fed, because the Fed, the rates are too high, Scott, and if you don't get it fixed fast, I’m gonna fire your ass, okay? I can't tell you, ‘Scott —’ ‘Sir, don’t fire him.” ‘It’s got —’ ‘Sir, please don’t fire him, he’s got three months to go. Don’t fire him.’ ‘I want to get him out, Scott.’ ‘Please.’ He’s the voice of reason. You’re very lucky you have him, I’ll tell you that.”

Related reading
All OCA mental acuity posts (Pinboard)

[Scott is Scott Bessent. “Juss” is an attempt to reproduce slurring. It’s not a typo.]

Some subtle Schitt

So many details in Schitt’s Creek are easy to miss:

Several episodes with the town’s Jazzagals (women’s chorus) went by before I realized that the name must be a joke on the choral institution known as Madrigals. (Ever been to a high-school Madrigals dinner? Fun!)

But one detail that I caught right away: Moira Rose’s (Catherine O’Hara) reference to working with Skip Fosse must be a callback to SCTV, with Bobby Bittman (Eugene Levy) and his kid bother Skip (Rick Moranis). Here they are, on The Sammy Maudlin Show, with Sammy (Joe Flaherty) and William B. Williams (John Candy). Lunacy, with (warning) one ethnic joke early on.

Omit needless experience

We are making our way through — or up? — Schitt’s Creek. A wonderful show (Hulu). But before many episodes, we see a screen with three small screens and a question:

Which ad experience do you prefer?

Is there a difference between an ad and an ad experience? Only if there’s also a difference between, say, an episode and an episode experience. In other words, no difference. So:

Which ad do you prefer?

But there’s still a problem: The word do makes sense only if the viewer is able to make a choice based upon earlier viewing. So:

Which ad would you prefer?

But the question still assumes that the viewer has a preference — which of course can then be factored into whatever algorithm serves up future ads. So:

Which ad?

Or, perhaps, “Choose your ad.”

It occurs to me that “Which ad experience do you prefer?” might be tongue-in-cheek phrasing, but I might be overthinking things, just as I already have in writing this post.

[We never choose our ad. We would prefer not to. We let Hulu do as it pleases.]

Apple and surveillance

Tim Cook was among the many corporate executives at the current occupant’s dinner for Mohammed bin Salman last night. From a New York Times article inventorying the guests and their ties to Saudi Arabia:

Apple has spent over $2 billion with companies in Saudi Arabia over the past five years, and during a visit to the country in late 2024, Mr. Cook pledged to open Apple stores there by 2026. The company has faced some blowback for hosting a Saudi app that allows men to track the movement of their wives and daughters. In 2019, Mr. Cook said he would investigate the app, but it is still available today.

So the App Store removes apps that allow users to track ICE, but not an app that allows men to track the movement of their wives and daughters.

Shame on Apple.

And as a gay man, Tim Cook should know that Saudi Arabia criminalizes same-sex sexual activity. The maximum penalty, though it doesn’t appear to have been enforced for several years, is death. The current occupant said yesterday that Prince Mohammed is “incredible” on human rights.

“Things happen”

Today, in the Oval Office, Mary Bruce of ABC News had the temerity to ask Prince Mohammed bin Salman about the murder in 2018 of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, carried out, according to U.S. intelligence, at the prince’s direction. Bruce added that 9/11 families are angry about the prince’s visit to the Oval Office. Why, she asked the prince, should the American people trust him?

The current occupant replied:

“You’re mentioning somebody that was extremely controversial. A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about. Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen. But he knew nothing about it, and we can leave it at that. You don’t have to embarrass our guest.”

“Things happen”: that phrasing has a particular resonance for me, as it appears in Geoffrey Hill’s poem “Ovid in the Third Reich.” Imagine the poem’s speaker as a voice of complicity amid the horrors of that regime. The poem begins:

I love my work and my children. God
Is distant, difficult. Things happen.

Yes, things happen. No human agency required.

Later Bruce asked why the current occupant doesn’t release the Epstein files himself, as he is permitted to do. A tirade followed, in the course of which the occupant told Bruce that she is angry and mean, that she is a purveyor of fake news, that ABC is a “crappy company,” that its license should be taken away, and “No more questions from you.”

Bruce spoke back, unintelligibly, as the occupant spoke over her. In my imaginary world, every journalist in the room would have shouted back: She’s not fake news. Answer the question. Stop threatening us.

Today, everyone in the room was silent.

[See also Friday’s “Quiet, piggy,” also met with silence.]

Noirvember Scavenger Hunt

Kristina at the film-centric blog Speakeasy is conducting a Noirvember Scavenger Hunt. Since March 2016 I’ve been writing a handful of sentences about every movie I’ve watched, which makes finding my way back to titles and directors easy. So how could I not take up the hunt?

My picks for the hunt’s fourteen items:

Dan Duryea
Chicago Calling (dir. John Reinhardt, 1951). One of the bleakest films I’ve ever seen, with Duryea as a hard-drinking failed photographer living in Los Angeles’s impoverished Bunker Hill neighborhood. I’d say it must be Duryea’s finest performance.

Lizabeth Scott
As Antonia “Toni” Marachek in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (dir. Lewis Milestone, 1946).“You were looking for trouble, but it was a good kind of trouble,” says Toni.

There are no small parts
From Dark Passage (dir. Delmar Daves, 1947), a three-way tie. In order of appearance: Tom D’Andrea as Sam, the cabdriver who aspires to buy two goldfish: “It adds class to the joint. Makes it a little homey.” Houseley Stevens as Dr. Walter Coley, all-night plastic surgeon: “I perfected my own special technique twelve years ago, before I was kicked out of the medical association.” And Tom Fadden as the cook in Harry’s Wagon: “Easy does it.”

Odd couple
Nick (Cecil Kellaway) and Cora (Lana Turner) in The Postman Always Rings Twice (dir. Tay Garnett, 1946). I think we’re meant to wonder what Cora was running from to end up married to Nick.

RKO
The Window (dir. Ted Tetzlaff, 1949). From a story by Cornell Woolrich, with the ill-fated Bobby Driscoll as a boy who witnesses a murder and can’t get anyone to believe him.

1960s
Blast of Silence (dir. Allen Baron, 1961). A hit man arrives in New York City at Christmas time to do a job, and things go wrong. A grim vision of the city and a grim vision of human character that emerges in Lionel Stander’s voiceover.

Amnesia
Somewhere in the Night (dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1946). John Hodiak as a man who, like Oedipus, is determined to uncover the truth of his identity, whatever the cost. And Nancy Guild as a nightclub singer/caregiver, a cross between Lauren Bacall and Teresa Wright.


Remake
M (dir. Joseph Losey, 1951). Fritz Lang’s movie moves to Los Angeles. It’s a deep cast, with Luther Adler, Walter Burke, Raymond Burr, Howard Da Silva, Norman Lloyd, David Wayne (the agonized killer), and a long episode in the Bradbury Building, the movie’s Best Supporting Actor.

Great villain
Born to Kill (dir. Robert Wise, 1947). Lawrence Tierney as Sam Wilde, an eerily Trumpian sort who dominates and destroys everyone in his way as he attempts to maintain relationships with two sisters (Audrey Long, Claire Trevor). This movie begins and ends with over-the-top scenes of jealousy and brutal violence. In between, nearly everything is magnificent squalor.

Robert Siodmak
The opening scene in a diner is by itself enough to make The Killers (1946) my choice. Fun to see the nervous proprietor (Harry Hayden) realize that he’s caught in a noir. Flashback upon flashback follows.

Mob boss
The Big Combo (dir. Joseph H. Lewis, 1955). Richard Conte as Mr. Brown, who turns a radio and a hearing aid into instruments of torture.

Journalism
Call Northside 777 (dir. Henry Hathwaway, 1948). Jimmy Stewart plays P.J. McNeal, a Chicago reporter looking into the guilt or innocence of a man serving a ninety-nine-year sentence for killing a cop. If there’s any debate as to whether this movie counts as noir, the scene in which McNeal meets Wanda Skutnik (Betty Garde) should settle it.

UK
The Woman in Question (dir. Anthony Asquith, 1950). A British Rashomon, in which a police inspector is given five different accounts of a murdered fortune teller, Madame Astra (Jean Kent). A tour de force for Kent, who changes from genteel lady to slattern to siren to helpless damsel to scorned lover.

Ensemble cast
The Maltese Falcon (dir. John Huston, 1941). Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, and Elisha Cook, Jr., all waiting in Sam Spade’s apartment for a package to be delivered.

Recently updated

A commercial that drives me crazy Now with a contrasting commercial with better basketball.

[That post now has close to 1,000 views. I am cheered that so many people are moved to seek out commentary on the crazy-making commercial.]

Oxford comma T-shirt

[It’s difficult to photograph fabric if you’re me.]

The subject was tattoos. I told my daughter and son that I had no interest in ever getting one. But I added that if I were to get one, I’d get — and then I drew what you see above, a comma, a space, and an and in a serif font. So they had a shirt made. Not an Oxford cloth button-down shirt: an Oxford T-shirt.

My, does shirt begin to look odd after you’ve typed it several times. Thanks, Rachel and Ben!

Related reading
All OCA Oxford comma posts (Pinboard)

Recently updated

Words of the year Now with vibe coding.

[Dictionaries, show some self-respect.]

A house is not a home

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

The windows appear to be shuttered. But the door appears to be shuttered as well. Was a Collyer cousin living here? No. No one was. And still, today, no one is.

An April Fool’s piece by a newspaper columnist suggests that this address was known to at least some Brooklynites:

[“5 Minutes from Bob Side.” Brooklyn Heights Press April 01, 1971.]

Another Brooklyn paper gives a hint as to what the building is about:

[“Statistics of East River Tunnel.” The Brooklyn Eagle, Jaunary 9, 1908.]

On July 10, 1903, ground was broken to create this shaft in what was once a private residence. But what was the East River tunnel?

Here’s an answer (urbanistarierl, via Instagram). And a lengthier one (PIX11 News, via YouTube).

Additional strangeness: a comment on the Pix11 story mentions a subway substation at the corner of West 13th Street and Greenwich Avenue in Manhattan. (It’s not masquerading as a residence.) On a visit to the city in 2016, I took a photograph of one of the substation’s Art Deco doors.

[Click for a larger view.]

The door remains, sometimes covered in graffiti, sometimes not. Google Maps shows that the bit of graffiti in my photograph (“Uncle Sloppy”) was gone by November 2016.

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

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is David P. Williams’s third Stumper in the last three months. I hope that this constructor is now in regular rotation: his puzzles are challenging, amusing, and full of novelty in both clues and answers. I bounced around in search of a starting point, landed on 13-A, five letters, “Avocado is its alternative for high-heat cooking,” and never looked back.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

2-D, four letters, “Formerly classy person?” I respect such clues.

5-D, seven letters, “Figure carved on Pirates of the Caribbean ships.” I know someone who would approve.

6-D, eleven letters, “Talk derived from a nautical water cask.” See? Novelty.

16-A, ten letters, “Greater good?” See 2-D.

19-A, seven letters, “Spread of very varied opinions.” Hah.

21-D, four letters, “Lit ____.” I hope so.

23-D, eleven letters, “High-tech handles.” I think this clue would be better as “Handles.” Who thinks of them as “high-tech”?

24-A, letters, “Triangular treats.” The speed with which they might be consumed makes it difficult to register their shape.

35-D, eight letters, “Recipient of the deductive ‘You have been in Afghanistan’ (1887).” No doubt sending many a solver to find out what permits this deduction.

39-A, thirteen letters, “Pithy pair.” I appear to be going for alliterative clues today.

54-A, four letters, “Orange peel portion.” I began wondering how many segments an orange has. (Typically ten.) And then I remembered that I was doing a Saturday Stumper.

56-A, three letters, “Liquid that makes pretzels chewy.” Eww.

58-A, five letters, “Highbrow.” Yes, but this word has another meaning for me.

My favorite in this puzzle: 10-D, ten letters, “Surname of TV Guide’ s #2 of its 50 best cartoons (2013).” Partly because of the loopiness of the clue (#2! 2013!), partly because the word surname amuses me as applied to cartoon characters, partly because TV Guide makes me think of my grandparents.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

ICE in one Chicago neighborhood

“When he won, it just became clear that our folks were going to be a target”: “Rogers Park” is an episode of the podcast Criminal about ICE and opposition to ICE in one Chicago neighborhood.

The number to report ICE activity anywhere in Illinois: 855-435-7693 (Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights). And offline: three short whistles mean that ICE is nearby; three long whistles mean that ICE is detaining or arresting someone.

Hidden stained glass

In Brooklyn: Hidden stained glass, on the storefront of a former pharmacy. Thanks, reader.

Mongol sighting

A pencil has its moment in The Farmer’s Daughter (dir. H.C. Potter, 1947). Joseph Cotten is Glenn Morley, son of wealth, member of Congress. He’s in the family library, using a double clipboard to work on a speech.

[Click for a larger view.]

But what kind of pencil is he using? Excuse me, Congressman, could you let us see the ferrule?

[Click for a larger view.]

Yes, it’s a Mongol.

Since my kidhood, the (now-defunct) Eberhard Faber Mongol has been my favorite pencil.

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

Wolf tooth potato

I saw it on a menu months ago and had to ask.

A detailed answer here.

[I’d prefer wolf-tooth potato, but it’s not my potato, not my restaurant.]

Mental acuity

Via Aaron Rupar. My transcription:

“Christians and more, think of this, more than twice as likely foster care. They’ll adopt the general population, they adopt to it so easily. When they get out they adopt to it just like as, uh, it becomes second nature, it’s amazing.”

The current occupant seems to have confused adapt with adopt. And so much more.

As my high-school Spanish teacher used to say in his jiving and joking with another student and me, “What’s he babbling about?”

No babbling on Truth Social since yesterday afternoon.

Related reading
All OCA mental acuity posts (Pinboard)

Recently updated

Gnome Bakers The building is on the market.

A source for Molly Drake

Reading A.A. Milne’s Now We Are Six (1927) with a granddaughter, I found what seems to be the source for the shape of Molly Drake’s heartbreaking song “I Remember.” It’s the first stanza of Milne’s poem “Forgiven”:

I found a little beetle, so that Beetle was his name,
And I called him Alexander and he answered just
    the same.
I put him in a match-box, and I kept him all the
    day....
And Nanny let my beetle out—
        Yes, Nanny let my beetle out—
            She went and let my beetle out—
                And Beetle ran away.

Now listen to “I Remember.”

Molly Drake (1915–1993) made her home recordings in the 1950s. I would imagine that at some point she was reading Milne to one or both of her children, Gabrielle (b. 1944) and Nick (1948–1974).

Related reading
"The music of Molly Drake, mother of Nick Drake, is finally having its moment” (NPR Illinois) : A New York Times obituary (From the Overlooked No More series)

Caper sizes

Nonpareil, surfine, capucin, capote, fine, grusa: caper sizes, from small to large. I got curious after spotting a Cento jar labeled Capote.

No, they’re not

The Princeton professor Eddie Glaude on MSNBC this afternoon:

“Are these people decent? Are these folk who run the government decent and caring? No, everything seems to suggest that they’re not.”

This seems to be the day that the Epstein Dam is really beginning to break.

At work in a tower

[From The Man Who Found Himself (dir. Lew Landers, 1937). Click for a larger view.]

Jim Lowe at 30 Squares of Ontario tells me that this kind of railroad structure is known as an interlocking tower or switching tower. Notice the levers to the right: they’re used to control the tracks. Here, via Jim, is an explanation of how a tower functions. And here, via that explanation, is an account of what it was like to work in one, with a photograph that complements the screenshot above.

We see one of these towers, no longer in use, whenever we head north on I-57. But what struck me when I hit this moment in The Man Who Found Himself was how much the scene reminded me of my working conditions as a grad student in Boston. I worked late into the night by the light of a little desk lamp, surrounded by books, legal pads, pens and pencils, and a manual typewriter. I liked working with just one little light. The tower operator had no choice at night: the darkness beyond the desk made it possible to see the outside world (i.e., trains) free of reflections in the windows. I liked to keep my shades up to look out on Commonwealth Avenue as the trolleys went by.

Mental acuity

Via Aaron Rupar:

“And remember, we won World War I, we won World War II, we won everything in between. We won everything that came before.”

Related reading
All OCA mental acuity posts (Pinboard)

How to improve writing (no.130)

I don’t go looking for these things. They find me. From a New York Times article about a bullfighter:

When it was over, the bull was dead, the rare prize of its ears were hoisted in Mr. Morante’s hands and a blizzard of white handkerchiefs waved in appreciation.

I see a mixed metaphor in the waving blizzard, but the glaring problem is were. I’m not sure that correcting the error in subject-verb agreement is much of an improvement: “the rare prize of its ears was hoisted” still sounds off to me.

I think this sentence is an occasion for the use of what Garner’s Modern English Usage calls preventive grammar:

The best recourse is a rewording. Why perpetrate a sentence that’s awkward but arguably defensible? A sentence that’s only defensible will raise doubts in the reasonable reader’s mind.

I hit on this fix:

When it was over, the bull was dead, Mr. Morante hoisted the rare prize of its ears, and white handkerchiefs waved in appreciation.

A bonus of this fix: it eliminates an unneeded instance of the passive voice.

Related reading
All OCA How to improve writing posts

[This post is no. 130 in a series dedicated to improving stray bits of professional public prose. I had to add a serial comma to the Times sentence.]

G.P.A.-holes

[Zits, November 11, 2025.]

In the first panel of today’s Zits , the two fellows with perfect grades showed their test results to each other: “I aced the A.P. physics test!” “Same here!” Pierce’s portmanteau seems to be original with him, or with Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman, the makers of Zits. I think it deserves an A.

The only time I can recall seeing students compare grades was when I taught a first-year Honors class. When I returned essays, the students would huddle in the hallway and compare as I skulked away. They must must have been comparing all through their high-school years. As the semester wore on, it became clear to me that most of these students were interested mainly in grades. Not a satisfying teaching experience.

[I’d omit the periods in A.P. and G.P.A., but it’s not my comic strip.]

How to improve writing (no.129)

From a New York Times article about Damon Landor, a Rastafarian who sued after prison guards shaved his dreadlocks:

The Supreme Court on Monday will hear arguments in a case testing whether Mr. Landor can sue state prison officials for money for violating his religious rights.

Attorney General Elizabeth B. Murrill of Louisiana, who is defending the prison officials, nevertheless strongly condemned what happened to him in prison. So, too, did lower-court judges who ruled against Mr. Landor. But the appeals court said it was bound by past rulings banning such lawsuits.

Did you stumble a bit in the second paragraph? I did. Elaine did too. Him makes for a slight glitch: it’s an elementary principle of prose that you bring a name back in at the beginning of a paragraph. And nevertheless is off here: the attorney general’s condemnation of what happened preceded her defense of prison officials at the Supreme Court.

Better:

The Supreme Court on Monday will hear arguments in a case testing whether Mr. Landor can sue state prison officials for money for violating his religious rights.

Though she is defending prison officials in court, Attorney General Elizabeth B. Murrill of Louisiana has strongly condemned what happened to Mr. Landor. So, too, did lower-court judges who ruled against him. But the appeals court said it was bound by past rulings banning such lawsuits.

I Hope Damon Landor gets some justice.

Related reading
All OCA How to improve writing posts

[This post is no. 129 in a series dedicated to improving stray bits of professional public prose. The text of the online version of the Times article has changed since it first appeared, with “Mr. Landor” replacing “him.”]

Veterans Day

The Great War ended on November 11, 1918. Armistice Day was observed the next year. In the United Kingdom and Commonwealth nations, Armistice Day is now Remembrance Day. In the United States, Armistice Day is now Veterans Day.

In 1925 Armistice Day fell on a Wednesday. At the end of an observance on the Central Park Mall, a bugler played the first notes of “Taps.”

[“Taps Sounds in City on Armistice Day.” The New York Times, November 12, 1925.]

Ronnie Wood on Desert Island Discs

It’s lively listening: Ronnie Wood on Desert Island Discs (BBC Radio 4). Wait for what happens when Lauren Laverne asks Wood to choose a luxury item.

Also available, an episode with Keith Richards. An episode with Charlie Watts is for some reason unavailable. I posted a sentence from it in 2022: “I live in TCM world.”

Related reading
All OCA Desert Island Discs posts

Twelve movies

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

The Man Who Found Himself (dir. Lew Landers, 1937). Another The Man Who title from a recent string of movies at TCM. Like The Man Who Played God, it’s the kind of fable one might have heard years ago on a Paul Harvey radio broadcast: a doctor and pilot beset by scandal (John Beal) flees medicine for life as a hobo before taking a job as an airplane mechanic at a medical transport company, where a cheerful nurse (Joan Fontaine) begins to suspect his hidden abilities as a doctor and pilot. When a desperate call for medical help comes, will this fellow still pretend he’s not a doctor, or will he rise to the occasion? With a hobo jungle, a lunch counter serving “coffee and,” and Fontaine’s first starring role. ★★ (TCM)

[About Paul Harvey: when our daughter was a wee pal, we frequented a Chinese restaurant that always had Paul Harvey on the radio on Saturdays at noon. Those lunches and an episode of This American Life are why I know about Paul Harvey.]

*

The Ballad of Wallis Island (dir. James Griffiths, 2025). A two-time lottery winner (Tom Key) living on a Welsh island engages a defunct folk-music duo (Tom Basden and Carey Mulligan) to perform for him. Tensions brew between the performers (one of whom brings along a partner, who is out of the picture for much of the picture) and between the performers and their host, whom I shall dub, yes, Stan. There is, as anyone would suspect, a backstory that explains Stan’s unusual effort. A sweet, gentle, poignant story, but a bit too Hallmarky for me. ★★★ (AP)

*

Bad Words (dir. Jason Bateman, 2013). A loophole in the rules allows forty-year-old Guy Trilby (Jason Bateman) to compete in a regional spelling bee for kids who have not yet graduated from eighth grade. He wins and advances to the national competition, dogged all the while by a reporter (Kathryn Hahn) looking to find out what it’s all about. Guy is a mix of contempt and trickery: he makes the Larry David of Curb Your Enthusiasm look like lovingkindness itself. With Rohan Chand as Guy’s ten-year-old frenemy and Philip Baker Hall as the king of the bee. ★★★ (AP)

*

Paula (dir. Rudlolph Maté, 1952). Miscarriage, infertility, an auto accident, motor aphasia, and redemption: it all may sound like mere melodrama, but the movie tells a deeply serious, deeply moving story. Loretta Young and Kent Smith star as Paul and John Rogers, an academic couple who can’t conceive. An auto accident brings a young orphan (Tommy Rettig, two years before Lassie) into their lives, and it appears that the three might become a family, but there are complications. Watch Young’s eyes in scene after scene and you’ll see what a great actor she was, and be prepared for your eyes to well up now and then. ★★★★ (YT)

*

The Farmer’s Daughter (dir. H.C. Potter, 1947). Loretta Young is the farmer’s daughter, Katrin Holstrom, a Swedish-American nursing student who loses her tuition money to a scammy sign painter and takes up work as a maid in the house of a high-powered political family, with a matriarch at the helm (Ethel Barrymore) and a son (Joseph Cotten) in Congress. As in so many pre-Code movies I’ve seen, love serves to erase class barriers. Things take a Capraesque turn when Katie enters politics and all factions unite to defeat Klannishness. Fine performances by the three principals, and the family’s library probably deserves a star of its own. ★★★ (YT)

[Yes, there’s a catwalk, accessible from the mansion’s second story. Click for a larger library.]

*

Christmas Eve (dir. Stuart Cooper, 1986). We didn’t realize it while watching, but this made-for-TV movie is a loose remake of the 1947 movie Christmas Eve (dir. Edward L. Marin). In her next-to-last performance after two decades in retirement, a luminous Young plays Amanda Kingsley, a wealthy widow who with her loyal butler Maitland (Trevor Howard, in one of his last performances) trudges through snow-covered streets to rescue stray cats and distribute sandwiches, coffee, and cash to homeless men and women. Amanda’s Scrooge-like developer son Andrew (Arthur Hill), estranged from his three children, wants to have his mother declared incompetent. It’s coming on Christmas, and having received some bad news about her health, Amanda is resolved to bring her grandchildren home (with the help of a private investigator) and reunite them with their father, but as I said, no spoilers. ★★★ (YT)

*

Orwell: 2+2=5 (dir. Paoul Peck, 2025). I can’t say that I learned anything new, aside from scattered facts of Orwell’s adult life, but many viewers, especially younger ones, will likely find this documentary a crash course in the practices of twentieth- and twenty-first-century authoritarianism and oppression, from the Great War to Gaza and Ukraine. For those who have read and thought about Orwell, this documentary will serve as a cold reminder: here is the world we live in, and Orwell foresaw and warned against so much of it. I thought while watching that this movie might pass for a Terence Davies effort: Orwell’s words — and only Orwell’s words, no talking heads — as a voiceover (Damian Lewis), with period photographs, news footage, and clips from three screen adaptations of Nineteen Eighty-Four and from other movies. It’s all artfully composed, but I’d suggest reading Orwell. ★★★ (P)

[An aside: How easy it is to fall into the language of euphemism and obfuscation. In 2022 I heard an announcer at an NPR affiliate refer to Vladimir Putin’s “peacekeeping operations in Ukraine.” You can bet that I called the station.]

[In theaters. For now, Plex is the only source for streaming. It’s a $5.99 rental.]

*

Dark Waters (dir. André de Toth, 1944). This Southern Gothic noir begins with trauma: a U-boat sinks a civilian ship, killing Leslie Calvin’s wealthy parents, leaving Leslie (Merle Oberon) as one of only four survivors. Having lost her parents, she’s taken in by her only living relative, an aunt who’s now living at the family plantation, and slowly, slowly, things get very strange: it’s like Gaslight on the bayou. The creepy atmosphere is intensified by the presence of Elisha Cook Jr. as plantation overseer and Thomas Mitchell, of all people, as a houseguest. And the kindly doctor (Franchot Tone) who’s in love with Leslie doesn’t appear to believe the tale she’s telling him — yikes! ★★★★ (YT)

*

Southside 1–1000 (dir. Boris Ingster, 1950). A semi-documentary story of a Secret Service effort to crack a counterfeiting scheme. In this movie’s favor: a telephone exchange name in its title; a slick trick that gets the counterfeit plates from hand to hand; Los Angeles street scenes, complete with Angels Flight; a throwaway bit in a grocery/liquor store with Argentina Brunetti and Tito Vuolo; Morris Ankrum as a dying counterfeiter who commands every scene he’s in; Andrea King as a hotel manager leading a double life; and a wild conclusion. Not in this movie’s favor: the premise that perfect plates for counterfeiting can be fashioned in a prison cell; Don DeFore as an undercover Secret Service man. Years before Hazel, DeFore is already too much a George Baxter, staid and stuffy, to pass for a big-spending “free-money Joe,” much less a criminal, and his relationship with Andrea King’s bad girl (she falls for him ) stretches credibility, snaps it in two, and grinds the pieces into tiny bits. ★★ (TCM)

*

Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows (dir. Kent Jones, 2007). After an early career as a journeyman writer, Val Lewton (1904–1951) entered the film industry as an assistant to David O. Selznick at MGM before heading the horror division at RKO, where, in the 1940s, he produced some extraordinary movies: Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie, The Seventh Victim (a John Ashbery favorite), The Ghost Ship, and The Curse of the Cat People, among others. As this documentary makes clear, Lewton movies are rightly understood as exercises not in horror but in terror — and as beautiful dream-like compositions of light and shadow. Lewton himself was indeed in the shadows, drifting from studio to studio, working on one unproduced project after another before his early death, leaving behind not a single film clip or recording of himself. Martin Scorcese, the documentary’s narrator, says that “Movies and the movie business are two different things,” and this effort does justice to a producer who was all about what he called his “poor, simple, lucky little films.” ★★★★ (TCM)

*

New Orleans Uncensored (dir. William Castle, 1955). An odd title for a story of corruption on the docks of New Orleans. Arthur Franz plays a Navy vet working as a longshoreman to finance the purchase of a barge; Beverly Garland (later of My Three Sons ) and Helene Stanton play antithetical characters who look much too much alike, adding unnecessary confusion to an already confusing plot. The best thing about the movie: scenes shot on location, including one at Cafe du Monde. Look for Stacy Harris (of many Dragnet episodes) and Mike Mazurki, familiar faces among the largely unknown. ★★ (YT)

*

Dracula’s Daughter (dir. Lambert Hillyer, 1936). The Transylvanian vampire and the burden of the past: Gloria Holden is Countess Marya Zaleska, a daughter struggling to resist her inborn vampiric desire. The count and Renfield return as corpses in coffins, and Dr. Van Hesling (Edward Van Sloan) is here, though he’s now known as Von Helsing. There’s considerable comedy, too much comedy for my taste, including a callback of the celebrated “I never drink … wine.” Much has been of the lesbian overtones in the countess’s attack on a young woman (Nan Grey): it’s a brief but wildly transgressive scene in the post-Code world. ★★★ (V)

[First sentence with apologies to Walter Jackson Bate.]

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

Recently updated

“Johnny Hodges!” Tooting my own horn, so to speak.

Il neige

Time once again to read a Pierre Reverdy poem. Or this very short play.

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About last night

Ron Filipkowski’s comment seems right to me:

Please don’t think this beltway game of having retiring Dem senators vote yes while everyone else votes no is going to shield leadership from the end result. We see what is happening and can’t be fooled by those games.

Last night’s capitulation reminds me of why I never contribute to the Democratic National Committee.

How to pronounce lapis lazuli

Not the way Will Shortz pronounced it on NPR’s Sunday Puzzle this morning (at the 2:54 mark). Shortz said
/ˌla-pəs-la-ˈzü-lē/.

The Oxford English Dictionary gives five pronunciations, two from British English, three from the States. Merriam-Webster offers two:

/ˌla-pəs-ˈla-zə-lē/
/ˌla-pəs-ˈla-zhə-lē/

Neither of those appears in the OED. In all seven forms, it’s the first syllable of lazuli that’s stressed, not the second. In none does the second syllable sound as /zü/ (zoo).

Me, I’ve always said /ˌla-pəs-ˈla-zə-lē/. And how did I know Will Shortz was wrong? Because I absorbed a correct pronunciation as an undergrad reading William Butler Yeats’s “Lapis Lazuli,” a poem that seemed to be of great enormous personal significance to my beloved professor Jim Doyle.

“All men have aimed at, found and lost”: I think that line in particular spoke to Jim.

A mystery cafeteria

[99–101 William Street and 110–126 William Street, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click either image for a much larger view.]

Here are two views of a mystery establishment, the Janice and Jessie O’Connell Cafeteria. Sisters? A mother–daughter team? A wife and husband? (Probably not a wife and husband, though Jessie can be a male name.) I can find no trace of the place online save for these photographs.

Hoey, Ellison & Frost, next door to the cafeteria, was a big name in insurance.

I like the schoolhouse light fixtures and the ghost walkers in the first photograph. And I like the dramatic perspective in the second, with a crowd of pedestrians heading straight for the photographer. Perhaps it was the lunch hour. If so, are the women leaving the cafeteria, or are they walking right past it, perhaps having fled from Hoey, Ellison & Frost?

Thanks, Brian, for pointing me to this cafeteria.

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More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard)

“Johnny Hodges!”

The New York Times has another five-minutes feature: “5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Alto Saxophone,” with musicians suggesting Benny Carter, Julius Hemphill, Charlie Parker, and others. For once I got in on the comments at the start of things, and wrote

I wouldn’t gainsay any of the choices here. But how can you have a primer on the alto saxophone and omit Johnny Hodges? I would suggest “Isfahan,” “The Star-Crossed Lovers,” or “Blood Count” (the last Billy Strayhorn composition, composed in hospital) — each a showcase for Hodges with the Duke Ellington orchestra.

As Ellington would say after a Hodges feature, “Johnny Hodges! Johnny Hodges! Johnny Hodges!”

A reply from another reader pointed out that the list is “just a sampling,” and that we “shouldn’t take offense” that it’s not comprehensive. Good grief. Leaving Johnny Hodges out of a sampling of alto saxophonists is like leaving John Coltrane, Coleman Hawkins, or Lester Young out of a sampling of tenor saxophonists. There’s no reason to take offense. It’s just a matter of a glaring, stupefying omission. It seems to me that the Times could have found some way to prompt somebody to suggest Hodges. (Raises hand.)

If you’d like to hear the tunes I suggested: “Isfahan,” from The Far East Suite (in performance, with Ellington holding the sheet music for Hodges to read), “The Star-Crossed Lovers”, from Such Sweet Thunder, and “Blood Count” (a live performance).

*

November 10: I have to toot my own horn, so to speak, and add that my comment is number one among what the Times calls Reader Picks, with twenty-eight recommendations.

Today’s Saturday Stumper

About today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Matthew Sewell: 24-A, seven letters, “Oh my!” My commentary will be 1-A, five letters, “Of few, sharp words.” And that’s 12-D, ten letters, “... no joke!”

For me, today’s puzzle is far too opaque. I looked up many answers — funny how that gets easier once you start. So I found little joy here, but I did like 29-D, ten letters, “Mobile library setting.” My first guess, and a well-founded one: APPALACHIA.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Recently updated

Cobbler’s bench or mulberry bush? The Far Side says “mulberry bush.”

Lost and found

I’ve been moving ~1000 CDs from their plastic cases into storage binders. And while doing so I lost my best pair of scissors. (I sometimes need them to cut back-cover inserts down to size.) Elaine, who has a gift for finding lost objects, wondered if I might have thrown the scissors away with all the unrecyclable (at least here) plastic. I doubted it. But when we moved our trash from our old can to a new one, she spotted the scissors, poking through a bag.

And then a knife that once belonged to my parents went missing, a Regent Sheffield paring knife, made in England. The knife went with me when I left for Boston in 1980. I had to find it. So I put on rubber gloves and deconstructed a bag full of garbage. And there it was, at the very bottom, amid carrot peels. Yes, I had done the peeling and cutting.

Small wins. I’ll take them.

Related posts
A Sheffield contrivance : Is there a Swiss peeler in the house?

Archive.today endangered

Lifehacker reports that the FBI is going after the anti-paywall site archive.today.

Regular readers of Orange Crate Art may have noticed that I sometimes link to webpages saved in archive.today. I began doing so when I discovered that gift links to, say, New York Times articles have unannounced, uncertain expiration dates.

[Yes, I’ve started italicizing my blog’s name. The Chicago Manual of Style recommendation: websites, Roman; blogs, italics. No, I can’t do it. It feels inauthentic and pompous.]

Why the first Tuesday

Why is the first Tuesday in November Election Day in the United States? I’m glad I asked. From Wikipedia (note numbers omitted):

By 1792, federal law permitted each state legislature to choose presidential electors any time within a 34-day period before the first Wednesday in December. A November election was convenient because the harvest would have been completed but the most severe winter weather, impeding transportation, would not yet have arrived, while the new election results also would roughly conform to a new year. Tuesday was chosen as Election Day so that voters could attend church on Sunday, travel to the polling location, usually in the county seat, on Monday, and vote before Wednesday, which was usually when farmers would sell their produce at the market.

And now I am imagining Stephen Colbert reading this explanation aloud. Maybe it’s time for a change? Or at least for a federal holiday?