Sand, slag, coal, crime, lunch

[123-133 Varick Avenue, East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

From industrial Brooklyn, a composite of Brooklyn industry: [Unreadable] Repair Co., Evergreen Sand Company, The Slag Company of America, Vijax Coal, and Gates Coal. And up front, what looks like a ramshackle luncheonette.

The Vijax Coal Company was the site of two robberies in 1938, crimes committed in the course of a gruesome four-man spree:

[“Gang Seized Here For 3 Kidnappings: Hoover Implicates 4 Suspects in Robberies Also.” The New York Times, November 2, 1938.]

The kidnapping victims: an executive of a White Plains sand and gravel company, murdered before a ransom was arranged; the owner of a Brooklyn coal company; and the son of the owner of a Manhattan stevedoring company. Those two men were released after their families paid ransoms. One must wonder what prompted the perpetrators to go after sand, gravel, coal, and stevedoring. The Times reported that two of the men responsible were executed in 1940. A third received a fifty-year sentence. The fourth culprit, who testified against his three cronies, received a suspended sentence.

On a happier note: a second WPA photograph gives a better look at Marty’s Luncheonette. If wonder if the photographers were brave enough to eat there.

[137–57 Varick Street? The numbering here seems off. Click for a larger view.]

[Click for a larger view.]

Today a massive recycling operation stands where these businesses once stood: Cooper Recycling, which described as “the largest construction and demolition debris recycling facility in NYC.” It’s women-owned and family-run.

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

A metaphor for a presidency

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

The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has become a metaphor for the Trump presidency....

Minnesota governor Tim Walz commented: “Found an imaginary problem, said only they could fix it, didn’t listen to experts, hired buddies who grifted millions, failed miserably, bragged how great it went. The entire Trump presidency in a nutshell.”

And as Richardson says, “not only is the reflecting pool defying [the current occupant’s] narrative, so are Iran and Israel.”

Father’s Day

Happy Father’s Day to all.

A joke in the traditional manner, à la my dad, who was making dad jokes long before they were called dad jokes:

Why did the girl put a shoe on her face?

No spoilers; the answer is in the comments. Joke approved by three beta testers.

Related reading
All OCA jokes in the traditional, non-traditional, and neo-traditional manners

[Merriam-Webster dates dad joke to 1987.]

Florence Price’s “Adoration” in Vienna

The Vienna Philharmonic, under the direction of Lorenzo Viotti, plays Elaine’s arrangement of Florence Price’s “Adoration” (a piece written for organ), June 19, in Vienna.

Elaine has written something about it too.

[Elaine, wow.]

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by Matthew Sewell, and it’s quite a challenge. I had to move to the online puzzle and use autocheck, letter by letter, to get the last few words. The one that really flummoxed me: 33-D, eight letters, “The Howling villains,” though in retrospect I can see that the clue is clueful.

Three clue-and-answer pairs that delighted me:

16-A, nine letters, “Snail mail and dumb phones.” I immediately thought of another, though I don’t buy it.

18-A, thirteen letters, “Honeyed bunch.” I thought first of cereal, which I think the clue wanted me to think.

36-A, twelve letters, “Query of the convinced.” Clever: why would someone who’s convinced ask a question?

My favorite in this puzzle: 52-A, nine letters, “Less-than-stately pleasure dome.” It gave me a new way to think of a scene in a movie.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

About that music

That is, the music at the dedication ceremony for the Obama Presidential Center. I thought the performances by Jennifer Hudson, Marc Anthony, and Stevie Wonder were electrifying. Bono, Eddie Vedder: I cried uncle.

I know that the music for this event was not chosen with Elaine or me in mind. However.

Conspicuously missing from an event held on the South Side of Chicago: any trace of blues or jazz. “Sweet Home Chicago” by Buddy Guy or a rousing rendition of Sonny Rollins’s “St. Thomas” (by anyone) might have sufficed. (I would not expect a journey into the world of the AACM.) Also conspicuously missing: any trace of so-called classical music. Elaine and I each thought of Florence Price, the black American composer who lived on the South Side for decades, and whose short composition “Adoration” has become well known as a deeply moving and infinitely adaptable piece of music. It's being performed by the Vienna Philharmonic tonight to mark Juneteenth. It’s good to now know that something by Price (“Adoration”?) is on the program for an orchestra concert at the Obama center in July.

There’s no easy way to contact the center with suggestions for future programming. So I'll just yell as loudly as I can: some blues and jazz, please.

Elaine has some thoughts too.

[Buddy Guy performed at the White House in 2012. Obama honored Sonny Rollins with the National Medal of Arts in 2011.]

Aftermath

Elaine and I went walking around town yesterday to see the aftermath of Wednesday’s tornado. Several streets were hit hard — massive trees uprooted, streetlights knocked sideways, windows blown out, limbs through roofs. (Maximum wind speed: 116 mph.) We stopped at a couple of houses where people were picking up debris and helped. We were out for a long time.

For Juneteenth

From 1923: “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” performed by the Manhattan Harmony Four, with Lorenzo Dyer, piano. Words by James Weldon Johnson, music by J. Rosamond Johnson.

[Elaine made an arrangement for strings.]

Dedicated

From C-SPAN: the dedication ceremony for the Obama Presidential Center.

I’ve read that the building itself has tissue stations. For this event you’ll have to provide your own.

A tornado or two or more

Several tornadoes went through our portion of east-central Illinois last night. Our household got off easy: we brought our devices and instruments downstairs, and when we lost power, we listened to local weather on a transistor radio (bought for just that reason) and read David Copperfield on screens. By ten or so, the storm had passed.

This morning I saw that we lost one small branch from one tree. Elsewhere in town, many households were not nearly so fortunate.

“A famous American poem”

Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister (1947).

Nabokov’s 1964 introduction to the novel reveals these lines as “a chance selection of iambic incidents culled from the prose of Moby Dick .” The word whalemen is of course a clue.

Searching the text of the novel at Project Gutenberg reveals that these couplets come from chapters five, nine, twelve, and thirty-seven. Nabokov, or his imagined poet, gets a word wrong: Melville’s text reads down , not shown .

A poem made from another writer’s words: it appears that Nabokov was following in the footsteps of M.A. Jenene.

Related reading
All OCA Nabokov posts (Pinboard)

“Welcome in!”

I heard it for the first time a few days in a Chase Bank commercial: “Welcome in!” How strange. But it’s a thing — a strange thing, I’d say. I have yet to hear it in real life.

Abdullah Ibrahim at the Library of Congress

From 2016, Abdullah Ibrahim and the Mukashi Trio at the Library of Congress. With Cleave Guyton, clarinet, flute, and piccolo; and Noah Jackson, cello and bass. And another “Ubu Suku.”

[I’m remembering things I listened to back when.]

Abdullah Ibrahim, Tiny Desk (Home) Concert

From 2022, a Tiny Desk (Home) Concert, Abdullah Ibrahim, solo piano, at home in Chiemgau, Germany.

A related post
Abdullah Ibrahim (1934–2026)

Twelve movies

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

The Woman in Green (dir. Roy Willian Neill, 1945). I always think these Sherlock Holmes movies will be more interesting than they turn out to be. Holmes’s (Basil Rathbone) deductions are often tenuous at best, which makes me wonder whether the detective keeps Dr. Watson (Nigel Bruce) around because he’s so easily impressed. The plot here involves random murders and the surgeon-like removal of fingers. I didn’t realize that we’d seen it before until the last few minutes of aerial adventure. ★★ (YT)

*

Criminal Court (dir. Robert Wise, 1946). A thrice-told tale: there’s The Man Who Talked Too Much (1940), this loose remake with Tom Conway and Martha O’Driscoll, and the later remake Illegal (1955) — which is by far the best of the three movies. This effort is ridiculously improbable. For instance: if your boyfriend is running to be district attorney, do not sing in a nightclub owned by a racketeer, do not flee the office in which you find the racketeer shot dead, and do not proceed to hide out from the police. And for instance: if you’re running for district attorney, do not flee the office in which you too find the racketeer shot to death. ★ (TCM)

*

Cunk on Life (dir. Al Campbell, 2024). Are cells worth having? What percentage of people have a human body? A spoof of BBC documentaries, with comedian Diane Morgan as Philomena Cunk, asking big questions of academics and scientists, all of whom keep astonishingly straight faces (though particle physicist Brian Cox gives as good as he gets). Morgan’s delivery is spot on, and the comedy is quick or quicker: let your attention lapse for a second or two and you’ll miss something. ★★★★ (N)

*

More Than a Secretary (dir. Alfred E. Green, 1936). Bespectacled Carol Baldwin (Jean Arthur) leaves the secretarial school she runs with another gal to land a man of her own: health nut and editor of Body and Brain Fred Gilbert (George Brent). But Carol finds that she has competition from a former student, the very dim, very blonde Maizie (not Mae) West (Dorothea Kent). Though the scenes of office life, with mandatory exercise led by the hulking Ernest (Lionel Stander), are fun, this comedy quickly runs out of energy. I’m not happy about giving any Jean Arthur movie fewer than four stars. ★★ (CC)

*

Anna Karenina (dir. Julien Duvivier, 1948). Shame on us: we watched three adaptations in 2022 after reading the novel but had forgotten all three. This one remains the best, with Vivien Leigh is a tormented Anna, Kieron Moore is a glamorous Count Vronsky, and Ralph Richardson is a wounded, vindictive Aleksey Karenin. But the novel is about families , and that emphasis is missing here. A lavish production, with a score by Constant Lambert and the eerie image of a bearded man checking a train’s wheels. ★★★★ (CC)

*

The Long Dark Hall (dir. Reginald Beck and Anthony Bushell, 1951). The frame story, with a writer and editor talking about the premise for a murder mystery, makes me think that the contrivances and stock elements in this story make it a meta spoof of the stuff a hack writer might work up — either that, or it’s kinda dumb. Rex Harrison plays a married businessman carrying on an affair with a showgirl. When she’s found dead, he’s accused of her murder, but his wife (Lilli Palmer) stands by him. That Harrison and Palmer were married when this movie was made is another point that makes me lean toward meta. ★★★★/★★ (YT)

[Four stars if it’s a spoof, two if it’s not.]

*

D.O.A. (dir. Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton, 1988). We’d already given up on No Way Out (a remake of The Big Clock) when we decided to try this one from the Criterion Channel feature ’80 Remakes and Their Originals. I’m not a fan of the original D.O.A., with its goofy sound effects and awkward love story, but it stands far above this effort, a preposterous reimagining, with an novelist manqué English professor (Dennis Quaid) as the poisoned protagonist, an insanely cooperative freshman (Meg Ryan) as his sidekick, and a key plot device borrowed from Deathtrap. Ryan’s character: “You know, I don’t get off on this Rambo shit.” Me neither. ★ (CC)

*

Born to Kill (dir. Robert Wise, 1947). From our household’s favorite year in movies, with Lawrence Tierney as the aptly named Sam Wild, a fellow who’ll kill at the slightest hint of betrayal. And yes, he’s irresistible, to both Georgia Brent (Audrey Long) and her foster sister Helen (Claire Trevor), who proclaims, “You, you’re strength, excitement, and depravity!” Three grotesques — Sam’s queerish sidekick (Elisha Cook Jr.), a shabby private detective (Walter Slezak), and an alcoholic landlady looking to get the goods on Sam (Esther Howard) — add considerable value to the story. One of the darkest film noirs, and how did Robert Wise ever go from this movie to The Sound of Music? ★★★★

*

The Captive City (dir. Robert Wise, 1952). Based on the work of Alvin M. Josephy Jr., a reporter for Time and co-writer of the screenplay. Jim Austin, the editor of a small-town newspaper (John Forsythe), works to uncover the doings of a Mafia gambling operation, one in which the town’s prominent businessmen all have their shares. Shot on location in Reno, Nevada (of all places), with plenty of glimpses of mid-century life (I especially enjoyed seeing the book-crammed house of the Austins, Jim and Marge (Joan Camden), who has her own career as a syndicated gardening columnist). Some startling scenes: the murder by car of a crusty private detective (Hal K. Dawson), the beating of a young newspaper photographer (Martin Milner), and a cameo by Estes Kefauver. ★★★ (YT)

*

Diplomatic Courier (dir. Henry Hathaway, 1952). Mike Kells (Tyrone Power) thinks of himself as a mailman: he’s a diplomatic courier, whose mission is to travel to Salzburg and pick up a secret document from an American agent (an ex-Navy friend). But it gets complicated, with the agent killed, a wealthy American woman of means (Patricia Neal) pursuing him, and another woman, a “Red” agent (Hildegard Knef), pursuing him for a different purpose. Lots of atmosphere, and a great sequence on a train, but the story is fairly inert. The most interesting scene, with a female impersonator in a nightclub (Max Ralli), won’t make sense until much later. ★★★ (YT)

*

Two for the Seesaw (dir. Robert Wise, 1962). Robert Mitchum, a lawyer from Omaha awaiting a divorce, has come east to live in a Mulberry Street tenement and wander the big city. Shirley MacLaine is a dancer plugged into the hip world. Anyone interested in cringing at the sexual politics of a not distant past would do well to watch this dreadful movie (an adaptation of a play by William Gibson: this Gibson, not this one). Everything about this effort feels contrived, but it’s worth watching for at least two more reasons: to see how bad a movie with great actors can be, and to see mid-century Manhattan and a bit of the Bronx via Ted McCord’s black-and-white cinematography. ★ (A)

*

Remarkably Bright Creatures (dir. Olivia Newman, 2026). Set in Washington State, it’s a strange one, with Tova (Sally Field), an aquarium cleaning lady who lost her son many years ago; Cameron (Lewis Pullman), a musician who lives in his van, and Marcellus (Agnetha), an octopus (voiced by Alfred Molina) who comments on the doings of the humans whose lives he follows. Suspension of disbelief is easy when it comes to Marcellus’s ruminations. It’s more difficult with the human doings at open-mic night, a scene that drags things into Hallmark territory. But then the movie pulls itself together and moves toward a remarkable ending. ★★★★ (N)

[I lean toward three stars, but I’m adding a star for Sally Field, who’s just so good. And the music over the end credits, Mal Waldron’s “Warm Canto” deserves four stars on its own.]

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

Bloomsday 2026

In the early hours of June 17, 1904, Leopold Bloom takes a drunken Stephen Dedalus under his wing and brings him to 7 Eccles Street for a cup of cocoa, “the creature cocoa.” And then the two men step outside. From the catechetical “Ithaca” episode of Ulysses.


Bloomsday: “the 16th of June 1904. Also: the 16th of June of any year, on which celebrations take place, esp. in Ireland, to mark the anniversary of the events in Joyce’s Ulysses” (Oxford English Dictionary ).

Related reading
All OCA Joyce posts (Pinboard)

[Stan Carey points out that rere is “a standard variant form in Hiberno-English and is not uncommon” in Ireland, “especially in architectural, geographical, and property-related contexts.” The title of the post in which he writes about the word would fit nicely as a headline in the “Aeolus” episode of Ulysses: “Rare ‘rere’ rears its head in Ireland.”]

Times ten

“The United States is preparing to mark a quarter century since its founding”: William Brangham on the PBS News Hour just now. Not sure how that happened.

A correction of sorts came later in the episode: “a quarter millennia.”

You can watch the episode at pbs.org.

Abdullah Ibrahim (1934–2026)

The pianist was ninety-one. The New York Times (gift link) has an obituary.

The composition “Ubu Suku,” which Ibrahim wrote and first recorded when he was known as Dollar Brand, has long been in my head. (I’ve sometimes listened to it on repeat.) Here is that first recording, from 1964, with Johnny Gertze (bass) and Makaya Ntshoko (drums).

From 1978, a duet with Archie Shepp.

And from 1980, a solo piano recording.

[Ubusuku, or ebusuku: Xhosa for night.]

Mystery actor

[Click for a larger view.]

Wait — is that? (Checks IMDb.) It is.

Leave your guess(es) in the comments. I’ll drop a hint if one is needed.

*

No need for a hint: the answer is in the comments.

Related reading
All OCA mystery actor posts (Pinboard)

Why students can’t read

In The Chronicle of Higher Education, Tyler Jagt says that his students cannot read — read well enough, that is, to do the work of a rhetoric and comp class:

Every generation of professors has complained that their students cannot read. The lament is usually overblown, but data have caught up to anecdote, and what I am seeing in my classroom is no longer a hunch. There is a measurable, generational collapse in sustained reading and writing, and the academy is responding to it with improvisation and exhaustion rather than the structural overhaul it requires.

And Chronicle readers responded.

I’ll say again what I’ve often said: the crisis in the humanities is a crisis of reading.

A few related posts
Reading or not : Struggling to read : “The End of the English Major” : To Calkins, Fountas, and Pinnell : “Warning from the Trenches”

Librarians rehired

From The Chronicle of Higher Education : Western Illinois University, the state school that fired its nine librarians in 2024, now must hire them back.

Related posts
Firing librarians : University library, or storage room?

Once Upon a Time in Harlem

There’s now a trailer for Once Upon a Time in Harlem, a film by William Greaves and David Greaves that documents a 1972 gathering of Harlem Renaissance artists and intellectuals in Duke Ellington’s townhouse.

Eubie Blake: “Being here with all these intelligentsia, I’m afraid to open my mouth.”

[Was Duke present? He doesn’t appear in the trailer.]

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.]

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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.

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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.]

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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.”

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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.”