Ham n Eggery

[100-05 Queens Boulevard, Forest Hills, Queens, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Right across from Ex-Lax/Cosmetics/Luncheon, we have, or had, Ham n Eggery, “Glorifying the American Dish.” That motto is a takeoff on the name of the 1929 Florenz Ziegfeld extravaganza Glorifying the American Girl . Which reminds me that our friend Margie King Barab was friends with Dorothy Wegman Raphaelson, one of the last two surviving Ziegfeld girls.

But back to the restaurant. The magazine Men’s Wear made brief mention of Ham n Eggery in 1940:

there’s a new place on Queens Boulevard called the “Ham’n Eggery” which does a sensational job with Va. ham and a couple of eggs.

If you click for the much larger view, you’ll notice many details: the lone patron rehearsing for an Edward Hopper painting, the sign announcing a closing (WILL BE CLOSED    OM: for vacation?) “Air Cooled,” the candy-store signage, Bell Telephone, Bilt-Rite (which explains Parson T’s: tires), the subway entrance and bus stop sign, and best of all, those eggs running joyfully to the pan. Whee!

Today the Ham n Eggery building houses a Dunkin’.

Thanks, Brian.

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

How to improve writing (no. 133)

Benjamin Dreyer posted a sentence published in The New York Times (title: “oh dear”) and invited readers to have at it. The subject is David Hockney:

And then his wordly peregrinations, culminating in his arrival in Los Angeles, when he quickly helped we longtime residents to start seeing again, as if for the first time: the pools, the palms, the sprinklers, the building facades, the sky and that light !

“Oh dear” is right. Here’s a possible revision, letting the sentence fragment stand:

And then his wide-ranging travels, which brought him to Los Angeles, where his work showed longtime residents their city anew: the pools, the palms, the sprinklers, the buildings, the sky, the light.

Related reading
All OCA How to improve writing posts (Pinboard)

[This post is no. 133 in a series dedicated to improving stray bits of professional public prose. As of this morning, “wordly” stands uncorrected in the Times article. If the writer insists on putting himself in the sentence, add “like me” after “residents.”]

David Plowden (1932–2026)

“I have been beset with a sense of urgency to record those parts of our heritage which seem to be receding as quickly as the view from the rear of a speeding train”: from the New York Times obituary (gift link) for the photographer David Plowden.

Related reading and viewing
David Plowden’s website : David Plowden: Light, Shadow and Form (A 1999 documentary)

Knicks FTW!

I am relieved that the Knicks won tonight, because I'm not sure I could have taken the stress of watching a sixth or seventh game.

And I was thrilled to see Walt Frazier (eighty-one!) in the audience.

If I were a snarkier person, I’d be repurposing a Doc Pomus song: “Wemby, Wemby, what went wrong?”

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by David P. Williams. Let’s see: 1-A, seven letters, “Changing places”? Easy. 3-D, six letters, “Goes for competitively”? Easy with the first letter now there. 19-A, three letters, “Start to squirm”? Also easy with the last letter now there. And then the puzzle got much more difficult. I drew some kind of line at 44-D, six letters, “More that lessens.” But I did finish the puzzle before drawing the line. (I goofed — explanation in the comments.)

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

6-D, five letters, “Zee-surrounded getaway.” Sometimes I understand a baffling clue as I type it out, but I just typed out this clue, and I still do not understand it. (Now I do.)

11-D, eight letters, “Small tie.” A new direction in menswear?

14-A, eight letters, “Industry leader.” Ick.

15-D, thirteen letters, “Disorderly.” The answer could have been clued in a more obscure way.

16-A, six letters, “Trip starter.” So many tricky clues in this puzzle.

21-D, three letters, “Informal extension.” My first thought was ISH.

33-A, six letters, “Job with net income.” I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that I got this answer from reading Lorine Niedecker’s poetry.

34-A, fifteen letters, “Little lightweights.” Just wow.

35-D, eight letters, “Recession indicator.” Oof.

45-D, six letters, “Noise maker.” See 16-A.

48-D, five letters, “He’s enthralled by Cartier.” JAYZ doesn’t fit.

My favorite in this puzzle: 26-D, seven letters, “Party regular.” Because I saw the fifth letter but couldn’t believe my first thought could be the answer, and then realized that it had to be the answer.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Critical patriotism

Bruce Springsteen, interviewed by Jeffrey Brown on the PBS News Hour tonight:

I believe in critical patriotism. I believe that’s the definition of a patriot, you know, that you love your country so much that you are willing to look at it clearly, recognize its faults, encourage it to be a better place, and believe that you carry in your heart the country that is waiting.

[My transcription.]

Eberhard Faber No. 2 3/8

Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister (1947).

Eberhard Faber No. 2 3/8? That would be a Mongol.

Why that improbable fraction? Henry Petroski’s The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance (1990) explains:

To this day the names of companies are confusing, and much of that confusion can be traced back to the intense competition of the nineteenth century that led to fierce battles for distinctive trademarks, as well as to deliberate confusion. Even family-related concerns separated by an ocean could not escape the problems of protecting their identities from each other. Finer and finer distinctions between pencils and their markings began to appear, and the Mongol pencil of Eberhard Faber was among the first products in the United States to have a trademark. Questions of proprietary rights led eventually to such awkward designations of pencil hardnesses as 2 1/2, 2 4/8; and 2 5/10, not to mention the decimal 2.5, as the arithmetical inclination to simplify fractions clashed with trademark protection laws.

And yes, Nabokov cared about pencils.

Related reading
All OCA Mongol posts : Nabokov posts (Pinboard)

Blade oil FTW

I like my Remington Shortcut Pro Self-Haircut Trimmer Kit. For those of us without a lot on top, it does a fine job of keeping things short and orderly. (Short: unlike the product’s name.) But the lithium battery in the trimmer seemed to be fading: I’d charge and charge, and the blades would make only a slow wobble, not enough to cut hair.

Before giving up and buying another device, I removed the blade section and was surprised to see the spindle that moves the blades spinning with abandon. So the problem was not with the battery. I attacked the blades with compressed air and the edge of an index card to remove stuck hair. Hair came out but, still, nothing moved. I tried rinsing the blade section under water. No improvement. Then I applied three drops of the blade oil that you’re supposed to apply after each haircut. (Like, who does that?)

And everything kicked back into action. Lesson learned, hair cut.

“Where’s th’ punchline?”

[“Panel Discussion.” Zippy , June 11, 2026. Click for a larger view.]

In today’s strip, Zippy reads the comics he appeared in in the 1970s: “Okay — so where’s th’ punchline?”

In 1994, Bill Griffith and Bil Keane joined forces in Zippy and The Family Circus mashups.

Venn reading
All OCA Hi and Lois posts : Hi and Lois and Zippy posts : Zippy posts (Pinboard)

[If you’re wondering about “Tip o’ th’ hat to Brian and Greg”: Brian and Greg Walker, sons of Mort Walker, are now responsible for Hi and Lois. The Family Circus is credited to Bil Keane (d. 2011) and his son Jeff Keane. That strip’s “weird zombie existence” is chronicled in a short documentary.]

Domestic comedy

[While watching a bit of The Blue Dahlia (dir. George Marshall, 1946).]

“How did they stand wearing ties and having their collars buttoned up like that all the time?”

“They were getting paid.”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy (Pinboard)

Knicks (!)

I’m not a sports-minded guy. We were watching The Strange Woman (dir. Edgar G. Ulmer, 1946) last night when I remembered that there was a Knicks game happening — that is to say, an NBA Finals game. We paused the movie and got to watch the last five minutes. The curse that had fallen upon the Knicks in Monday’s game (part of which I had watched) was broken.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez:

THANK YOU TO THE PEOPLE WHO BLESSED MSG TODAY TO GET THE STANK VIBES OUT YOUR SERVICE IS APPRECIATED.

Context: fans burned copal and sage outside Madison Square Garden.

My time as a dedicated Knicks fan was back in the Reed-Bradley-DeBusschere-Frazier-Barnett days. Watching last night made me remember how a game can turn in seconds.

HCR on Blanche

In the most recent installment of Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson looks at Todd Blanche and the ongoing criminality of the current regime.

One detail of Blanche’s career not mentioned (and which I’d forgotten): in May 2025, after Blanche had been confirmed as deputy attorney general, the current occupant named him librarian of Congress. That gives an idea of how much respect the occupant has for librarianship. But the title didn’t stick.

There’s a name for it

It’s auditory pareidolia (it’s normal). What I’ve been hearing: Hank Williams-like songs and funk, thought not at the same time.

Related reading
All OCA pareidolia posts (Pinboard)

A tone ball

I heard something shifting around inside my guitar. After nearly thirty-two years, the maker’s label had detached from the back of the instrument. I turned the guitar upside down, shifted it around a bit, and Elaine pulled the label out of a f-hole with tweezers. And I shook out the two little pieces of Fun-Tak that had held the label in place.

And then I discovered this tone ball. My first.

[In real life, ¾" tall.]

The term tone ball comes from an unnamed employee at Elderly Instruments. We saw their impressive display of tone balls in 2011. Thank goodness Elaine snagged a screenshot of a page from Fretboard Journal (no longer available online) about Elderly’s display.

“A muddled Elizabethan play”

In a police state, all reading is revisionary.

Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister (1947).

Related reading
All OCA Nabokov posts (Pinboard)

James Blood Ulmer (1940–2026)

“The late music critic Greg Tate once described James as ‘the missing link between Jimi Hendrix and [his favorite guitarist] Wes Montgomery on one hand, and P-Funk and Mississippi Fred McDowell on the other’ ”: from an obituary for the guitarist and singer James Blood Ulmer (Clash ).

Here, from 1980, is how first I heard Ulmer, asking a question that remains timely: “Are You Glad to Be in America?”

From Keillorville

My recent exploration of the poetry of M.A. Jenene made me recall that in 2016 I made four poems from a week’s worth of poems from Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac : “Poem,” “Last Words,” “Upside Down,” and “Forecast.”

That radio show did feature some fine poems — you might recognize a line from William Wordsworth in “Poem.” But as I wrote in 2016,

an anecdotal sameness sets in rather quickly. Keillor’s reading voice adds an extra element of sameness, covering everything in dreary piety. Everyone sounds alike, or at least like cousins.

That dreary piety makes Keillor’s comment about the difference between the radio audience and the audience at a poetry reading even more baffling.

Ex-Lax in the news

““It’s my understanding they do have a non-detect level of Ex-Lax in them, but I figured since we’re OK with a non-detect level of PFAS, it would probably be OK”: “Laxative-laced brownies rattle Nantucket School Committee meeting” (The Boston Globe ).

Ex-Lax/Cosmetics/Luncheon

[100-02 Queens Boulevard, Forest Hills, Queens, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

These Queens storefronts seem (emphasis seem ) to me ahead of their time in their uniform understated signage. The rooftop railings suggest that this partial block was built as a single real-estate effort. From left to right: a luncheonette, Helen’s Beauty Salon (“Under New Management”), a bakery (“Store to Lease”), and a pharmacy/luncheonette, the kind of establishment that Nabokov writes of in Bend Sinister :“one of those fabulous corner stores that have face creams on one side and ice creams on the other.” As well as Mother’s Day cards and what look like Whitman’s Samplers. My guess is that a billboard (notice the lights) fills in the blank area that follows: the tax photographs show no there there.

The name Ex-Lax (“The Ideal Laxative”) seems to have once been present on every drugstore’s window(s). And now this storefront makes me wonder: were earlier generations of Americans constantly taking laxatives? The answer appears to be yes: James Whorton, a professor of medical history and ethics at the University of Washington, calls the first four decades of the twentieth century the “golden age of constipation.” Louis Armstrong was not alone in his devotion to laxative consumption.

But the triad Ex-Lax/Cosmetics/Luncheon seems off to me. Cosmetics first, before you go out to eat; Ex-Lax afterwards, no?

Google Maps shows an enormous CVS that appears to fill the space once occupied by these four establishments. But no Ex-Lax signage.

I would like to think that the WPA photographers placed that MEN WORKING next to their address sign.

[“Children actually enjoy taking Ex-Lax.” Life , March 22, 1937. Click for a larger view.]

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

“Semi-free”

The current occupant has observed that those who cannot afford tickets to the NBA Finals can avail themselves of television: “It’s sort of semi-free to watch it on television.”

“Semi-free” is also an apt description of the so-called “illiberal democracy” promulgated by one of the occupant’s role models, the recently defeated Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orbán.

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Stan Newman, the puzzle’s editor, is not my favorite kind of Stumper. Too much fact, too much trivia. The toughest part for me: the upper right corner, where 18-A, four letters, “Belgian-based imaging giant” and 32-A, three letters, “Reduced number” left me baffled. I turned to an online version of the puzzle to try letters until I found the ones that fit.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

9-D, three letters, “He’s had 40+ jobs since the ’60s (surfer, boxer, barista,...).” Yes, him.

17-A, ten letters, “ ‘This Land Is Your Land’ to ‘God Bless America.’”  I think I should have known.

21-A, six letters, “Foreign Legion wear.” What’s the name for those hats? Never mind; it doesn’t matter.

22-A, seven letters, “Type of terrarium.” Amusing, at least if you’re outside the terrarium.

26-D, four letters, “Eight-time Burton collaborator.” But which Burton?

28-A, five letters, “Seat’s proof of purchase.” Pretty obscure.

30-A, five letters, “First synthetic detergent (still widely sold).” I guessed correctly, but still pretty obscure.

40-D, eight letters, “Whom Khrushchev’s son-in-law wrote for.” I knew the answer because I know the word, but to my mind, it’s a ridiculous clue, and it did a lot to spoil my enjoyment of the puzzle. Too much fact, too much trivia.

56-A, four letters, “Collector’s item.” A bit of a stretch, but okay.

65-D, three letters, “Coverage from Calvin Klein.” I caught on.

My favorite in this puzzle: 67-A, ten letters, “Sort of a small saw.” Because it reminds me of younger days.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

“The presence of a mechanical medium”

Paduk is the dictator of an unnamed Eastern European country. He leads the Ekwilist Party, the Party of the Average Man. Paduk’s father, an inventor, was the creator of the padograph.

Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister (1947).

A mechanical device that reproduces personality: Nabokov was eerily prescient here.

Related reading
All OCA Nabokov posts (Pinboard)

Morley’s ghost

In The Guardian , Sarah Safer, daughter of Morley Safer, writes about the destruction of a television show :

My dad wasn’t sure about an afterlife and neither am I, but after the decimation of 60 Minutes, I like to imagine that he is still hanging around. To his colleagues’ dismay, he was famous for flouting the rules around smoking. If anyone at CBS News smells smoke in an edit room, or another place they shouldn’t, my dad is surely haunting it, encouraging those who carry on his legacy and, let’s hope, making trouble for the brass.

Bari Weiss and Nick Bilton are hereby on notice that our household has removed CBS from our televison universe.

A related post
Oh, that guy

No Soup

[From Big City (dir. Frank Borzage, 1937). Click for a larger view.]

The signage is one odd bit in a movie filled with odd bits. Talk about odd: what follows this scene is the cabbie drinking that entire bottle of milk. Why? Because someone thought it funny.

Is “No Soup Served During Radio Concerts” a joke about the pretensions of this lunch stand’s proprietor? Because slurps, like coughs and the crackling of candy wrappers, would interfere with the appreciation of good music? Or perhaps the words are a joke on “No soap, radio.” But that anti-joke didn’t become well-known until the 1950s. I tried to figure this one out, but — that’s right, no soap.

Spontaneous generation

Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister (1947).

Related reading
All OCA Nabokov posts (Pinboard) : On paper clips (An informal essay) : Paper clips (A prose poem)

Orange kiddo list

[Click for a larger list.]

This list, the work of a six-year-old, joins the list of supplies for an imaginary camping trip that my daughter Rachel made at the age of six or seven, many years ago. Two generations of youthful lists on Orange Crate Art.

Related reading
All OCA list posts (Pinboard)

Words of the day: milliner , millinery

Somehow I started thinking about those odd-looking words, milliner , millinery . Were they originally related to textile mills? No.

From the Oxford English Dictionary entry for milliner:

With capital initial. A native or inhabitant of Milan, a city in northern Italy. Obsolete.

The first citation for that meaning is from 1449, in a sentence about every “Venician, Italian, ... and Milener.” And then comes the more familiar meaning:

Originally: a seller of fancy wares, accessories, and articles of (female) apparel, esp. such as were originally made in Milan. Subsequently: spec. a person who designs, makes, or sells women’s hats.

The first citation for that meaning is from 1530, apparently from expense accounts for Henry VIII: “Paied to the Mylloner for certeyne cappes trymmed ... withe botons of golde.”

Millinery came later:

The articles made or sold by milliners. In earlier use frequently attributive .

The first citation is from 1676: “Millinery; disbursements for combs, mittens, gloves, thread, silk.”

And a later meaning:

The trade, business, or craft of a milliner,

with a first citation from Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects (1792): “In the afternoon, the girls should attend a school, where plain-work, mantua-making, millinery, &c., would be their employment.“

The OED entry for the word ends on a hopeful note, with a citation from The Palm Beach Post (January 15, 2000): “Don’t toss millinery onto the scrap heap of dead-end 21st-century careers just yet.”

Hats on!

Recently updated

Local man hits 100-post limit: And now the 100-post monthly limit is gone.

Arts, shmarts

Earlier today I posted a passage from Nabokov’s Bend Sinister on the role of education in a police state. I didn’t expect this New York Times article (gift link) to appear on the same day: “New Federal Guidelines Threaten Almost Half of Graduate Arts Programs.”

Deathtrap Mongols

[Michael Caine as Sidney Bruhl. Mongol pencils as themselves. From Deathtrap (dir. Sidney Lumet, 1982.) Click for a larger view.]

Related reading
All OCA Mongol posts (Pinboard)

“Less books and more commonsense”

In a nameless police state, a grocer explains things to Adam Krug, philosopher:

Vladmir Nabokov, from Bend Sinister (1947).

*

See also this New York Times article (gift link), published today: “New Federal Guidelines Threaten Almost Half of Graduate Arts Programs.”

Related reading
All OCA Nabokov posts (Pinboard)

Turn on your hazard lights (again)

[Now that summer is upon us, at least sort of, I’m repeating advice that I shared in 2011 and again in 2023 and 2024 and 2025. Pass it on.]

If you’re driving on a highway and the traffic suddenly slows or stops, and the vehicles behind you are at some distance:

~ Turn on your hazard lights.

~ Leave significant space between you and the vehicle in front of you.

~ Keep checking your rear-view mirror.

~ After someone has come up behind you, turn your hazard lights off.

If someone is coming up behind you and not paying full attention, your hazard lights might catch their eye and prompt them to slow down or stop in time. If not, the free space in front of your vehicle might lessen the severity of a collision.

I called the Illinois State Police to ask what they thought about using hazard lights in this way. A desk sergeant said it was the right thing to do and added the second and third points. I do those things without thinking and wouldn’t have thought to add them. I’ve added the fourth point for clarity.

Drivers of big rigs appear to make a habit of using their hazard lights in this way. Laypeople, not so much. Thus I’m repeating myself.

See also: the white stripe.

A CUB warning

For Illinoisans, a warning from the Citizens Utility Board:

“We urge Illinois consumers to carefully review any alternative electricity supplier offer pitched to them,” CUB Communications Director Jim Chilsen said. “Customers have lost far too much money to alternative suppliers over the last decade. Even in this market, ComEd or Ameren is probably your best bet for electricity supply.”

Our household almost latched on to one of those offers last year. It came in the mail and appeared to have our town’s imprimatur. But when I called city hall to ask some questions, no one knew what I was asking about. So I e-mailed the CUB and avoided what would likely have been an expensive mistake.

[The CUB is hardly a shill for ComEd or Ameren. Its purpose: “to fight for the rights of customers of investor-owned electric, gas and telecom utilities across Illinois.”]

Twelve movies

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

I Walk Alone (dir. Byron Haskin, 1947). “Don’t worry about me, Kay — I just got out of prison, not college”: Frankie Madison (Burt Lancaster) just did fourteen years, and he’s come back to Manhattan to get the half-of-everything that his partner in crime Noll Turner (Kirk Douglas) promised him. The problem is that Noll (aka Dink) isn’t okay with that, and Frankie’s pal Dave (Wendell Corey), now Noll’s accountant, is in a tough spot, wanting to do right by Frankie, but in thrall to the boss. And then there’s Kay Lawrence (Lizabeth Scott), a singer and pianist “mentored” by Noll, who feels her loyalties shifting. A solid film noir that becomes surprisingly brutal in its final scenes, and another movie from what seems to be our household’s favorite year in movies. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Lydia (dir. Julien Duvivier, 1941). Merle Oberon stars as Lydia MacMillan, a wealthy woman, founder of an orphanage, never married, reunited in old age (excellent makeup) and in flashbacks with her suitors: a doctor (Joseph Cotten), a football hero (George Reeves), an acclaimed pianist (Hans Jaray), and a seafarer (Alan Marshal). There’s something Stefan Zweig-like about this story — a love story, yes, but ultimately a parable about self-knowledge. But you have to be willing to get past some over-the-top dialogue (by Ben Hecht and Samuel Hoffenstein). To wit: “This love, love that’s part of the hot sun and the salt water, it’s like a feast that leaves you hungrier than a winter wolf.” ★★★★ (CC)

*

Deathtrap (dir. Sidney Lumet, 1982). Well, it was there, on what is now known as Live TV, so we set it to record, watched from the last half hour or so, and went back to the beginning. Clever fun, with one surprise after another. Michael Caine is a playwright with a new flop to his credit; Dyan Cannon, his fragile wife; Christopher Reeve, his promising student; Irene Worth, the psychic next door. If you haven’t watched it for many years, it’s unlikely that you’ll remember all the tricks. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Good Sam (dir. Leo McCarey, 1948). Gary Cooper and Ann Sheridan star as Sam and Lu Clayton: he, a department-store manager and friend to all in need; she, a put-upon homemaker who finds her husband’s charity to all comers erasing their family’s hope for a better future (spoiler: he’s secretly given away the money they’d been saving toward a house). It’s a poor man’s It’s a Wonderful Life (no pun intended), complete with an ending in which money makes everything okay. Hard to understand how the director responsible for Make Way for Tomorrow (1937) could be responsible for this awkward, unfunny comedy. I’m not surprised to see that it appeared on the The New York Times list (December 26, 1948) of the ten worst movies of the year. ★★ (YT)

*

The Dark Man (dir. Jeffrey Dell, 1951). Molly (Natasha Perry), an actor cycling to work at a provincial theater, hears gunshots and sees a tall man in a dark trenchcoat (Maxwell Reed) in a field — and now her life is in danger. A distinct Hitchcock flavor here, but also some dumb plot points. A greater flaw: a marked absence of characterization and an unconvincing instant romance between Molly and the craggy detective inspector (Edward Underwood) assigned to the case. Adding interest: the manhunt on an artillery range. ★★★ (YT)

*

The Man Who Talked Too Much (dir. Vincent Sherman, 1940). It turned out that we had seen the 1955 remake Illegal, with Edward G. Robinson and Nina Foch. Here George Brent stars as Steven M. Forbes, a prosecutor who goes into private practice (with Virginia Bruce as his secretary Joan Reed) after sending an innocent man to the chair. Forbes’s few clients pay him in apples and cheese, but his showmanship in the courtroom draws the interest of gangsters, and he soon goes over to the dark side, making real money while hiding evidence that would convict a murderer. As his kid brother John L. (William Lundigan) tells him, “You’re not a criminal lawyer, Steve; you’re a lawyer criminal” — and the mob then sets up John L. to take the blame for a murder. ★★★ (TCM)

*

Wait for Your Laugh (dir. Jason Wise, 2017). An affectionate documentary about Rose Marie (1923–2017), a radio and vaudeville star at the age of three, a performer on records and film not long after, a nightclub entertainer in adulthood, an actor who achieved her greatest fame as Sally Rogers on The Dick Van Dyke Show and became a regular on The Hollywood Squares. Here Rose Marie talks at length about her childhood, her brushes with the underworld in Chicago and Las Vegas (Al Capone was “Uncle Al”), her blissful but short-lived marriage, and the frustrations of TDVDS (she thought that the emphasis was always going to be on the writers) and 4 Girls 4 (spoiler: no one liked Helen O’Connell). Saddest line: “Nobody does a good act anymore,” evoking a lost world of showbiz, when an act was a blend of patter, jokes, song, and dance. With commentary from Peter Marshall, Carl Reiner, Dick Van Dyke and others. ★★★★ (A)

[Rose Marie’s early film efforts surface here and there on YouTube, but archive.org has all her early recordings.]

*

Tomorrow Is Forever (dir. Irving Pichel, 1946). Orson Welles and Claudette Colbert star in a story of the sorrows of war: he, John Andrew MacDonald, goes off to fight in the Great War; she, his wife Elizabeth, receives news of his death, discovers that she’s pregnant, and marries Lawrence Hamilton (George Brent), who becomes a happy stepfather. But John wasn’t killed: he was wounded, so badly that he needed facial reconstruction, though there’s also a strong implication that his wound is something like that of Hemingway’s Jake Barnes. When John returns to the States after twenty years as an Austrian scientist with a new name, he cannot bring himself to let Elizabeth know his true identity — or is his earlier self still his true identity? A grim, grim movie: imagine Odysseus coming back and never letting Penelope know who he is. ★★★ (A)

*

A Dispatch from Reuters (William Dieterle, 1940). Yes, there was a Reuter, Julius Reuter (Edward G. Robinson), whose name is here often pronounced “Rooter” for comic effect. Reuter begins with a carrier pigeon service, beating the mail at carrying messages and news reports. And then of course comes the telegraph. Sad to say, it’s a dull movie, whose main moment of drama is the death of a pigeon (electrocuted by a telegraph wire) — at least until Abraham Lincoln is assassinated, and the race to be first with the news is on. ★★ (TCM)

*

Kind Lady (dir. John Sturges, 1951). Mary Herries (Ethel Barrymore) is the kind, wealthy, forthright, art-loving, widowed or never married lady who opens her door to Henry Elcott (Maurice Evans), a struggling (natch) painter. And before long, Henry and his criminal associates (Betsy Blair, Angela Lansbury, and Keenan Wynn) begin to sell off the house’s furniture and paintings while Mary and her maid are locked up in bedrooms. Henry is a monstrous piece of work, cheerfully calling Mary “Aunt Mary” and dominating his wife (Blair), who seems more like a member of a tiny cult than a spouse. But Mary is a tough cookie, and though I don’t know enough to judge whether this movie is Ethel Barrymore’s finest hour, I will nevertheless say that it is. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Kind Lady (dir. George B. Seitz, 1935). It turned out that we had seen a remake of a movie adapted from a play (by Edward Chodorov) that was itself adapted from a short story (by Hugh Walpole). Here Mary Herries (Aline MacMahon) is a much younger woman who seems susceptible to the charms of the dashing painter Henry Abbott (Basil Rathbone), who’s not nearly as menacing as Maurice Evans’s Henry Elcott. And MacMahon plays a character not nearly as resourceful as Ethel Barrymore’s Mary. Now I wonder which movie was more faithful to its sources. ★★ (IA)

*

Big City (dir. Frank Borzage, 1937). This movie seems at odds with itself: it’s a proletarian drama of independent cab drivers fighting the thugs trying to put them out of business (there’s a bombing, a murder, and a threat of deportation), but there’s also plenty of sexy comedy, a scene in which a cabbie drinks an entire bottle of milk, and a battle royal of cabbies and banquet guests that pulls the movie into absurdity. Spencer Tracy and Luise Rainer star as Joe and Anna Benton, a New York City cab driver and his incredibly chic wife. The most unusual element in this movie: the banquet guests include Jack Dempsey, Jim Jeffries, Jim Thorpe, and other athletic greats (Wikipedia has them all). ★★★ (TCM)

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

Joe Negri (1926–2026)

Joe Negri, master guitarist and pretend handyman, has died at the age of ninety-nine. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has an obituary.

Here’s Joe Negri playing “Here’s That Rainy Day.”

A tea room, and more

[40-11 Queens Boulevard, Sunnyside, Queens, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Still in Queens, one of the two boroughs I know least well. (Staten Island is the other). And once again on Queens Boulevard, to visit not a diner but a tea room. I thought that I might find some trace of the Frances Constance Tea Room online — a listing in a restaurant directory, a matchbook for sale at eBay — but I found nothing more than a listing in the 1940 telephone directory. I did find a plausible explanation of the term “tea room.” From John Ferrell’s Mary Mac’s Tea Room: 65 Years of Recipes from Atlanta’s Favorite Dining Room (2010):

It wasn’t uncommon for widows to open tea rooms and serve the food Southern women knew how to cook best. They called their establishments “tea rooms,” rather than using the more pedestrian-sounding “restaurant,” as a way of making the business seem instantly respectable.

If you click for big, you’ll see that the Frances Constance Tea Room was a purveyor of southern cooking in Queens.

Jane Jacobs, the author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), would have looked favorably on this block of Queens Boulevard. From the corner on down, it offers a Mayflower Coffee Shop, an insurance agency for apartments and stores, a candy store, a florist, a cleaners, a barber shop (notice the cash register), the tea room, a bowling and billiards establishment, a shoe-repair shop, and a real-estate agency, followed by apartment buildings. Mixed use! The Jacobs ideal would likely include second-story apartments, a hardware store, and a locksmith, but this block pretty well fits her model for city life. (Jacobs and her family lived above a Greenwich Village candy store.)

I wonder: is that man in the doorway hangry? Has he smelled the aroma of fried chicken wafting through the open door of the Frances Constance Tea Room? Or is he scowling at the coat-and-tie boys taking pictures instead of doing a man’s work? But if it is man’s work, why the apron?

That man might be hangrier today: in April 2026, Google Maps showed this block as a block of food.


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

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by David P. Williams, is just right. But I have no time to write it up this morning. (Too much fun.)

One of many clue-and-answer pairs I admired: 33-D, eight letters, “Stall of a sort.” No spoiler here; the answer is in the comments.

Wherever you go, there they are

[Snapped while walking with an old phone repurposed as a podcaster. Click for a larger view.]

“FOR ERRATIC DRIVING”

As seen on the back of a school mini-bus: FOR ERRATIC DRIVING CALL, followed by a number. Thanks, but I already see enough of that.

Oh, that guy

If you need more reasons not to watch CBS, The New York Times has several (gift link):

In a bid to remake the country’s top-rated news program, Bari Weiss, the editor in chief of CBS News, on Thursday unveiled an overhaul of 60 Minutes , replacing the show’s executive producer with a tech journalist and firing two of its on-air correspondents.

Ms. Weiss named Nick Bilton, a former New York Times technology columnist and a filmmaker who has directed and produced documentaries for HBO and Netflix, as her pick to lead the 58-year-old Sunday show. Mr. Bilton, who has never worked in traditional broadcast news, will replace Tanya Simon, who had been at the show for more than three decades.

CBS News also fired Cecilia Vega, the program’s first Latina correspondent, and Sharyn Alfonsi, whose segment on torture in Salvadoran prisons was pulled off the air abruptly last year by Ms. Weiss, who requested more reporting. It aired in full at a later date. Draggan Mihailovich, the executive editor of 60 Minutes , was also fired, as was Matthew Polevoy, a senior producer.

The name Nick Bilton sounded familiar, and I figured out why: I noticed the name in 2013, when Bilton wrote a piece for the Times about digital etiquette. In it, he said that he didn’t like getting thank-you e-mails and that people should should use Google Maps rather than ask for directions. He said that he and his mother communicated “mostly through Twitter” and that his father learned a “lesson” after leaving a dozen voice mails for his son that went unheard. I had some thoughts about that column.

In 2014, Bilton wrote a piece announcing that the pen was dead, having been replaced by the finger. I had some thoughts about that column too. I’ll quote myself: “I guess Nick Bilton doesn’t believe in thank-you notes either. Or love letters.”

*

June 4: Bilton’s tenure at 60 Minutes thus far portends that the venerable show is doomed.

Recently updated

“Don’t start none, won’t be none”: Now with an earlier formulation by the Harlem Hamfats.

Saw-pits, top dogs, and underdogs

In the penultimate chapter of Charles Dickens’s Bleak House (1853), “two young ladies are occasionally found gambolling in sequestered saw-pits and such nooks of the park.” Saw-pits? Huh? The Oxford English Dictionary explains:

An excavation in the ground, over the mouth of which a framework is erected on which timber is placed to be sawn with a long two-handled saw by two men, the one standing in the pit and the other on a raised platform.

The first citation is from 1408, where the word is spelled sawpytt. Wikipedia has a photograph of a saw-pit, or sawpit, or saw pit in action.

Talk about fortuitous reading: Richard Rorty’s Contingency, Irony, Solidarity (1989) contains a passing reference (in a footnote about the use-mention distinction) to Dudley Do-Right’s faithful dog Faithful Dog. That reference made me wonder about the origin of underdog. And it so happens that folkloric etymology has it that top dog and underdog refer to the two sawyers of a saw-pit, with the sawyer down below, the underdog, being showered with the top dog’s sawdust. But there’s no evidence to support that claim.

Instead, think dog fighting (ugh). The OED defines top dog as “the dog with the best chance of winning a fight; the dominant dog in a fight.” First citation: 1847. And underdog: “the beaten dog in a fight; figurative the party overcome or worsted in a contest; one who is in a state of inferiority or subjection.”

Elaine and I both think that I’m part-beagle. No wonder I’m always going down rabbit holes.

Also from Bleak House
At Peffer and Snagsby’s : Bucket’s Moleskine? : Dickens in the house : Five sentences : Gridley’s monologue : “It must be a strange state” : Jellyby closets : Learning to write : Living on credit : “London particular” : Not quite teleportation : Reading don’t pay : “Town-talk”

A law-writer’s hand

[From Bleak House (dir. Justin Chadwick and Susanna White, 2005. Click for a much larger view.]

It’s yet another legal document in the endless case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce.

The 2005 BBC adaptation of Charles Dickens’s Bleak House is exceedingly terrific. And speaking of Bleak House : is there another novel that so hinges on matters of handwriting and literacy?

Related reading
All OCA Bleak House posts

[I think 2005 is superior to the BBC’s 1985 adapatation. Both are streaming at Amazon Prime.]

Local man hits 100-post limit

An odd Blogger problem confounded me: I happened to notice that a March 1 post with the WPA tax photograph of James P. Johnson’s house was missing from the monthly archive in the Blogger sidebar. I asked about the problem in the Blogger Help Community and tried various suggestions offered there. (Thanks, Vaishnav.) But nothing changed. The only fix I could hit on: changing the post’s date from March 1 to February 28. But if changed back to March 1, nothing in the sidebar.

What had happened: I had run up against a limit for the monthly archive list. Adam, a Google Product Expert on all things Blogger, explained:

It turns out there is a limit of 100 posts per month in the archive (not on the blog).

In your honor (not kidding), that will be increased to 128 posts per month. That won’t be in effect right away: maybe next week sometime.

Thanks for bringing this up, and for being a good sport about this.

As I wrote back, I like the idea of 128 — appropriate for anything having to do with computers. My first computer, an Apple //c, had 128KB of RAM.

Thanks, Adam, and thanks to Blogger/Google for increasing the archive limit.

*

June 3: The James P. Johnson post is now where it belongs, in the March monthly archive.

[The limit must be relatively recent: the May and October 2020 archives for OCA each show 102 posts.]

Nightly tabloid news

I need to learn to Just Say No. The next time I’m tempted to watch the evening news on commercial television, I will remind myself of the headlines that began last night’s ABC World News Tonight :

~ Multiple Fatalities in Fatal Plant “Rupture”
~ Pilot Declares Medical Emergency During Landing
~ Massive Home Blast Rocks Neighborhood
~ 30+M Under Dangerous Flood Threat
~ Trump Visits Doctor Amid Iran Tensions
~ CDC Seeking Volunteers for Ebola Screening
~ Critical Senate Race Runoff
~ Knicks Await Final Opponent
~ Urgent Search For Children
~ Bounce House Scare
~ Woman Killed by Umbrella
~ Teenager Bitten by Shark While Fishing
~ America Strong

And without a headline: “And we remember a jazz great tonight.”

I gave up after the bounce house. (No children were in the house.) I checked this morning and saw that the America Strong segment, about a kid who faltered while singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” at a softball game (and, surprise, the crowd helped him out) ran for 1:46. Sonny Rollins got seventeen seconds. And not much of “the world” in that broadcast at all.

And events at the immigrant detention center Delaney Hall got nothing. (Is it a concentration camp yet?)

“We’re all still here”

The PBS NewsHour last night aired a segment about Sonny Rollins, with excerpts from a 2011 interview. Jeffrey Brown asked Rollins if being “one of the last ones” from an earlier time in music weighed on him. Rollins’s reply:

Well, it does. All my friends are gone, Miles, Coltrane, Monk. I mean, in a sense, they're gone, but not really.

I’m the last guy. But, in a way, I’m not, because, when I’m gone, the music, my music, is going to be here. So we’re all still here. We’re all still here.

Related reading
All OCA Sonny Rollins posts (Pinboard)

[Sonny Rollins was the last living musician from Art Kane’s celebrated 1958 photograph, known as A Great Day in Harlem .]

A simple game, a great game

A cooperative game, a six-year-old’s suggestion. For four players, or any number of players.

~ Arrange yourselves in a loose circle.

~ Toss a largish ball from person to person, clockwise or counterwise, your choice.

~ After ten consecutive catches, everyone takes a step back.

~ Repeat.

~ If someone drops the ball, move back in and start again.

No winning, no losing, just fun and mild suspense for all.

Penn Station, ugh

WNYC’s Gothamist reveals architectural renderings of a rebuilt Penn Station:

The winning plan to rebuild Penn Station features renderings of a new train hall with American flags at the entrance, gold-accented railings, columns and escalators — and a presidential seal featuring President Donald Trump’s name.

It’s not difficult to imagine the rebuilt station becoming a magnet for vandals and pranksters.

Related reading and viewing
The Rise and Fall of Penn Station (PBS)

Colbert in Monroe

For those who caught the joke on the electrical box in the last episode of The Late Show (or didn’t): Stephen Colbert has hosted another episode of Only in Monroe. We watched the other night and laughed helplessly. How musical director Jack White kept a straight face, I dunno.

There’s also Colbert’s 2015 guest-host spot.

Words from Democritus

[“Of practical wisdom these are the three fruits: to deliberate well, to speak to the point, to do what is right.” Rediscovered on a piece of cardboard tucked away on a bookshelf.]

My son Ben wrote out these words from Democritus of Abdera (circa 460-370 BCE) some years ago. I think they’re worth sharing. The English rendering is a standard one. I’d like to call Ben (a philosophy major) Democritus Jr., but that name was already claimed by Robert Burton.

Sonny Rollins (1930–2026)

The tenor saxophonist has died at the age of ninety-five. The New York Times has an obituary (gift link).

I was fortunate to see Sonny Rollins twice, unforgettably twice, in 1989 and 2006. And he showed up in a dream last year, about to perform with Mary Lou Williams on my university campus.

These are five of my favorite Rollins performances: “St. Thomas,” “Wagon Wheels,” “The Bridge,” “There Will Never Be Another You,” and “Without a Song.”

“One day in the future people will be saying ‘Yes I once saw Sonny Rollins.’ ” From The Notebooks of Sonny Rollins, ed. Sam V.H. Reese (New York Review Books, 2024).

Related reading
All OCA Sonny Rollins posts (Pinboard)

2026, 2028, 2027

I had to see it for myself to believe it.

Ask Google: is it 2027 this year .

The answer: “It is 2026 right now, and will be 2028 next year, followed by 2027.”

I’d thank AI, but Google minus AI (adding the “the disenshittification Konami code”) returns the same result. In AI mode, putting the question in quotation marks returns the correct year. Without AI, a search in quotation marks yields links for a funny mug, Instagram reels, and a piece of fiction: “I hurriedly stopped the two girls, ‘Excuse me, is it 2027 this year?’”

But we already know the answer: It is 2026 right now, and will be 2028 next year, followed by 2027.

250 to 250

“A series of one-minute stories of the many people, places, and events that have built our country and remind us of the power of each person to make history”: 250 to 250 is a new effort from Heather Cox Richardson and friends. Twelve stories so far.

Memorial Day 1926

[“Booing of Fascisti Stirs the Paraders: Blackshirts Near Blows with Taunters Who Tell Them They ‘Don't Belong’ in Line.” The New York Times, June 1, 1926.]

The article ends by quoting Dr. E.G. Citriolo, one of the leaders of the Fascist contingent:

“I understand that some protest was to have been made this morning at City Hall,” he said. “I understand from my informant that those opposed to us are anti-Fascisti. They are purely Communists. They have no country and no religion. Our three symbols are: Country, religion and family.”

And the past, as William Faulkner wrote, is never dead. It’s not even past.

Clarence Williams’s house

[171-37 108th Avenue, Jamaica, Queens, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

A fellow lover of the music asked me if I knew the address for Clarence Williams, who lived across the street from James P. Johnson. I didn’t, nor did I know that Williams and Johnson were neighbors. But no. 171-37 was Williams’s house. The address is in his New York Times obituary.

Clarence Williams (1893 or 1898–1965), pianist, composer, and record producer, was a ubiquitous presence on blues and jazz 78s in the 1920s and ’30s, and another of the eminent Black Americans in music and sport who made Queens their home. (Wikipedia has Williams and his wife Eva Taylor living in Queens from the 1920s.) Among Williams’s credits as composer or co-composer: “Baby Won’t You Please Come Home,” “Cake Walking Babies from Home,” “Royal Garden Blues,” “Tain’t Nobody’s Biz-ness If I Do,” “Need a Little Sugar in My Bowl,” and “Sugar Blues.”

Here are just two samples of Williams on record:

From 1925, “Cake Walking Babies from Home” (Williams–Chris Smith–Henry Troy), by Clarence Williams’ Blue Five: Williams, piano; Eva Taylor (Mrs. Williams), vocal; Louis Armstrong, cornet; Sidney Bechet, soprano saxophone; Charlie Irvis, trombone; Buddy Christian, banjo. At 1:32 you can hear the piano preparing the charge into the last two choruses, in which Armstrong and Bechet take over.

And from 1929, “I’m Wild About That Thing” (Spencer Williams), with Bessie Smith and Eddie Lang (guitar). I love the way Smith’s performance builds in intensity from a sedate beginning. Williams takes it up a notch at the start of the sixth chorus. And as I wrote in a 2005 post, “Lang’s obbligato practically dances it way off the record.”

If you’re wondering, Williams was the grandfather of the actor Clarence Williams III. The resemblance was strong.

And if you’re wondering why address numbers in Queens are hyphenated, here’s an explanation.

Also in the Queens tax photographs: Fats Waller’s house. Like the Johnson house and the Waller house, no. 171-37 still stands.

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

[If you click for large, you’ll see that what appear to be holes in the fencing are shadows from the basement windows. I’d prefer Williams’s as the possessive at all times, but the record identifies the band as Clarence Williams’ Blue Five.]

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Kate Chin Park, left me at a loss. And then I saw 23-D, eleven letters, “Big name in confessional poetry.”

Some more clue-and-answer pairs of note:

1-A, nine letters, “Develop a crush?” Oof.

5-D, six letters, “Worked, as much wood.” Kate Chin Park is a furniture maker and craftsperson.

9-D, nine letters, “A maize-ing creation.” Could it be CORNMAZE? No, it couldn’t.

11-D, eleven letters, “Bit of kid lit.” I like this answer, which is a reminder of what it’s like to grow as a reader.

13-D, five letters, “Endure no longer.” This seems like an odd forced note in a terrific puzzle.

21-A, seven letters, “Bubblegum kin.” My first thought was of music.

36-D, four letters, “Rodin’s thinker.” A carefully worded clue.

41-A, four letters, “Commencement wear usually bought.” I didn’t know about this.

53-A, seven letters, “Matter of opinion.” Just one example of why I was grateful for 23-D.

54-D, four letters, “What an Eliot novel isn’t about.”Clever.

65-A, five letters, “Whom a Congressional caucus has advocated for since 2021.” I didn’t know about this either.

My favorite in this puzzle: 37-A, fifteen letters, “Erstwhile home for a paper tiger.”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Three Colbert footnotes

Last night’s last Late Show had at least one error of fact,¹ at least one very hidden joke,² and many surprises.³
__________

¹ The song one guest recalled hearing early in life was Fred Fisher’s “Chicago (That Todd’ling Town),” published in 1922. Stephen Colbert mistakenly identified Sammy Cahn as its writer. Cahn wrote the lyrics for the 1964 song “My Kind of Town (Chicago Is)” (music by Jimmy Van Heusen).

² Look at the electrical boxes.

³ You think I’m going to mention them here?

’Mame

All singing, all dancing, all soy!

It’s ’Mame, now playing at the Shubert Theatre.

[Just a short flight of fancy, and at least it’s an improvement over ghastly southern nostalgia.]

Penguin typos

From the BBC Radio 4 program Word of Mouth . Michael Rosen is interviewing Rebecca Lee, senior editor at Penguin and author of Rogues, Widows and Orphans: Mischief and Misadventures in the World of Books . The subject is typos:

Lee: Not all typos are equal. So, for example, spelling an author’s name wrong on the jacket of a book is an absolute nightmare.

Rosen: Has that happened?

Lee: Not to me.

It’s not clear whether Lee is referring to books she’s edited or books she’s written, but it’s happened at Penguin. The Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Thomas Nashe volumes from our Penguin Little Black Classics sets misspell the authors’ names on their covers. I wrote to Penguin three times about this series, once for each misspelling and once about the six blank pages in the volume of Wilfred Owen’s poems — never no reply.

Related posts
Caveat emptor (Penguin) : Caleridge : Nasha

[“Never no reply”: a nod to Duke Ellington’s “Never No Lament.”]

A librarian’s Mongol

[It’s Your Library (Teaching Films, Inc., 1947.]

Elaine was first to call it. It’s a Mongol, a WWII-era Mongol, with a plastic ferrule. Example here.

It’s Your Library is a short educational film. Not exceptionally great (i.e., weird), but still fun.

Related reading
All OCA Mongol posts (Pinboard)

Domestic comedy

Q: “Who do they think is watching this show?”

A: “People in pain?”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

[Watching The Late Show last night, we saw the same Salonpas commercial two — or was it three? — times. I know that the answer above was also a question. There’s always another question to be asked.]

Why RSS

Brent Simmons, developer of NetNewsWire, a free open-source RSS reader for macOS, iOS, and iPadOS, interviewed on an episode of John Gruber’s podcast The Talk Show (my transcription):

I want people to use RSS. By the mid-2010s or whatever, it was clear that the social networks were leading down a very, very dark place. And RSS is still a thing, and it’s not owned by billionaires who are trying to monetize outrage or whatever, so I wanted to make sure that there was an RSS reader that was free, right? So people had no excuse not to use it other than they don’t want to. But there wouldn’t be any excuse like, Oh, I can’t afford it. Nope — totally free. It’s not supported by ads or any other thing. Doesn’t phone home, doesn’t trick anybody into anything, just perfectly free and just right there. That is my goal, remains my goal.

See also Brent’s statement of purpose: Why Write an RSS Reader.

I’ve been relying on NetNewsWire since October 2022. It’s a great app. Long may it wave, if apps can be said to wave. Or even if not.

[The episode aired in January 2026. I’m catching up.]

Gmail Live

“To help find something in your inbox, you can just ask a question with your voice”: Gmail is introducing Gmail Live, “a new AI-powered voice mode” (The Verge ). But wait, there’s more:

Google is bringing voice-driven AI features to Docs and Keep, too. With Docs Live, you can talk over your ideas with Gemini and it will help structure a document and pull in details from places like your Gmail and Google Drive. In Keep, as you talk about things you might want the app to track, it can put together things like reminders and grocery lists for you.

No thank you.

Have I mentioned how much I like using Mimestream? Oh, yes, I see that I have.

“Sardines and shprinkles”

Mooch is hopeful.

Related reading
All OCA sardine posts (Pinboard)

[I snagged several cans of King Oscar Mediterranean Style in a supermarket last week. No shprinkles.]

Who wants to be a millionaire?

$1,776,000,000 ÷ 1600 = $1,110,000.

In a January 2026 reports, Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee noted “nearly 1,600 rioters and insurrectionists [pardoned] for crimes connected to the storming of the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.” Of course, some of those who will share in this obscene use of our tax dollars will get more than others.

Recently booed, recently updated

AI, booed: Now co-starring Eric Schmidt.

Dreaming up footnotes

From Richard Rorty’s Contingency, Irony, Solidarity (1989):

Nobody wants a complete set of footnotes to The Post Card any more than they want one to Finnegans Wake, Tristram Shandy, or Remembrance of Things Past. The reader’s relation with the authors of such books depends largely upon her being left alone to dream up her own footnotes.

But what would count as a complete set of footnotes? And how could ever know that it was complete?

Me, in something I wrote for students some years ago: “Literature exceeds criticism. There are no complete interpretations; there are only complete poems, novels, plays.”

Related reading
A handful of OCA Richard Rorty posts (Pinboard)

[La carte postale: De Socrate à Freud et au-delà (1980) is a work by Jacques Derrida.]

Drawings from John Ashbery’s collection

At the Morgan Library: Friends Who Came to See Me: Drawings from John Ashbery’s Collection . You can see eleven of the twenty-five drawings at the Morgan website.

Related reading
All OCA John Ashbery posts (Pinboard)

Some Lexikaliker rocks

At Lexikaliker, Gunther found einige Steine , or “some rocks.” Bonus: his handsome dog Kisho.

Related reading
All OCA “some rocks” posts (Pinboard)

Not quite teleportation

Charles Dickens, from Bleak House (1853).

Dickens believed in the spontaneous combustion of persons. He did not, as far as I know, believe in teleportation. But Tulkinghorn’s form of movement is at least close.

Also from Bleak House
At Peffer and Snagsby’s : Bucket’s Moleskine? : Dickens in the house : Five sentences : Gridley’s monologue : “It must be a strange state” : Jellyby closets : Learning to write : Living on credit : “London particular” : Reading don’t pay : “Town-talk”

A Theater of War production about AI

From Theater of War: A.I. Is About to Solve Loneliness. That’s a Problem , an adaptation of an essay by Paul Bloom, performed by Oscar Isaac, Bill Murray, and Lois Smith.

On stage at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, May 27, 8:00 p.m. Eastern, on the air at WNYC 93.9 FM, and in the air at WNYC.org.

[Re: A.I. : Paul Bloom’s essay appeared in The New Yorker, which insists on periods. The rest of the world doesn’t.]

Sunlite Diner

[3914 Queens Boulevard, Sunnyside, Queens, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Rest rooms and booth service? I’m there.

A Facebook post describes the Sunlite Diner as “a beloved Sunnyside spot where locals gathered over coffee, pancakes, and stories.”

And there’s a diner at this location today, Pete’s Grill, est. 2007.

As for Hub Homes, a 1937 New York Times article places this real-estate development of small, stately two-story houses south of Queens Boulevard between 60th and 64th Streets. Here’s one such house, within walking distance of the diner, if you like a long walk. In remembrance of things past, carry a keyring sporting a Sunlite Diner doodad.

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

“Game changer!”

In today’s Zippy , “a walk through the thicket of commonly overused words & phrases.”

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by David P. Williams, is a delightful puzzle — sometimes surprisingly straightforward (37-D, letters, “Shadow in the sky”), sometimes unexpectedly tricky (2-D, four letters, “Half the alphabet”). I started with 1-A, five letters, “Source for ‘kiwi’” and 3-D, four letters, “City that thanks London with an annual Christmas tree,” then dropped down to 57-A, ten letters, “Non-nutritive food for thought” and 55-D, four letters, “‘I wish to tune my quivering ____’: Byron.” And then jumped from place to place.

The one cross that had me baffled for a while: 12-D, four letters, “Big sports bet” and 16-A, four letters, “Moniker for those with no id.” Yow.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

10-A, four letters, “Person who’s short and lacks credit.” Clever.

10-D, six letters, “Aww-ful assessment.” Knowing someone who hates the word helped me get it.

16-A, fifteen letters, “Misdirection metaphor.” Every day in these Untied States. (Not a typo.)

21-D, four letters, “Best Score Oscar nominee name for Gandhi.” I’ve never seen it, but I guessed (correctly).

24-D, four letters, “Drop a line.” My first thought was SEND. My second was FLUB.

30-D, five letters, “Seasonal concern?” ALLERGIES doesn’t fit.

35-D, four letters, “Tavern’s light reading.” Oof.

My favorite in this puzzle: 49-A, fifteen letters, “Person who grew up on the Oregon Trail.” A term I know from my kids, who find it hilarious.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

“You know who he is”

Just one moment from Nick Shifrin’s reporting on the PBS NewsHour tonight:

Shifrin: “But President Trump also did not commit to approving $14 billion worth of arms sales to Taiwan that are already teed up.”

The current occupant, speaking to reporters on Air Force One: “I’m gonna see. I have to speak to the person that right now, as you know — you know who he is — that’s running Taiwan.”

Hard to say whether “you know who he is” is a cover for cognitive decline or a cover for ignorance. The Taiwanese president is named Lai Ching-te, and an American president who’s just been to China should have that name on hand.

AI, booed

“The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution”: Gloria Caulfield, a real-estate executive, praised AI in a commencement speech to arts and humanities and communications graduates and found herself booed. And then said that she had “struck a chord.”

No, lady, you struck a nerve.

Read all about it: “Graduates Boo Commencement Speech About A.I.” (The New York Times, gift link).

And here’s a longer excerpt from the speech.

*

May 19: Ex-Google executive Eric Schmidt was booed in Arizona. Wipe that smirk of your face, mister. Nobody wants the future you’re selling.

Related reading
All OCA AI posts (Pinboard)

[Like The New Yorker , the Times punctuates AI . Merriam-Webster deems the punctuated form less common.]

Mystery actor

[Click for a larger view.]

Yes, he’s in disguise. But a more significant element of misdirection: he’s laughing, at something genuinely funny. Yes, that guy, laughing.

A hint: the actor was known for violence both offscreen and on.

Another hint: he made an appearance on Seinfeld .

The answer is now in the comments.

Leave your guess(es) in the comments.

Related reading
All OCA mystery actor posts (Pinboard)

What’s that smell?

[Dustin, May 15, 2026. Click for a larger view.]

I thought that yesterday’s Dustin was a joke. And then I saw today’s strip and discovered that UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship, coming soon to the current occupant’s front yard) has indeed put out a line of colognes (packaged in fist-in-glove-shaped vessels).

The scent that prompts Dustin’s sister Meg’s snark is Ultimate K.O., and it’s real: “Sweet like a knockout punch yet grounded in the power and persistence that drives every fight.”