Domestic comedy

“Proprioception — it's the sense of the body in space. I know about it from Charles Olson.”

“I know about it from Simone Biles.”

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[The Pinboard link does a search — no account needed.]

Domestic comedy

“Matt Gaetz is going to be the attorney general!”

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[He may not become attorney general. Still, reality is trumping satire daily.]

Domestic comedy

“His /ant/ or /ahnt/ was there — I’m not sure which.”

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Twelve movies

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

The Harder They Come (dir. Perry Henzell, 1972). When the grandmother of a Jamaican country boy (jimmy Cliff) dies, he comes to Kingston in search of a job. And a dream comes true: he gets to record a song of his own, “The Harder They Come.” Reggae plays in or underneath scene after scene, but the movie is in the end about capitalism and its discontents: economic exploitation in the music business and the ganja trade, and the paucity of opportunity that might prompt someone to seek fame as an outlaw. With handheld camerawork, many non-actors, and strong echoes of American movies — Little Caesar, High Sierra, Gun Crazy, and Bonnie and Clyde among them. ★★★★ (CC)

*

Grand National Night, aka Wicked Wife (dir. Bob McNaught, 1953). British horse racing is part of it, but the movie focuses on domestic turmoil: horse-centric husband Gerald (Nigel Patrick) and his horse-hating, philandering wife Babs (Moira Lister). When the partners clash and Babs is accidentally killed (trust me, that’s not a spoiler), suspicion falls on Gerald, who insists that his wife wasn’t home that night. This movie begins well, but its human interest drains away quickly. A trick at the end turns the story into something like a lesser episode of Murder, She Wrote. ★★ (YT)

*

Uranium Boom (dir. William Castle, 1956). In Colorado, prospectors Brad and Grady (Dennis Morgan and William Tallman) fight, make up, forge a friendship, and part ways when Brad marries Grady’s girlfriend Jean (Patricia Medina). Grady plots revenge, but everyone lives happily ever after. Unnecessarily snappy patter — “The old do-re-mi, that’s what I want, and plenty of it” —enlivens this rather dopey movie. My favorite line: “Bad day at Yellow Rock.” ★★ (YT)

*

The Midnight Story (dir. Joseph Pevney, 1957). A priest is murdered in a San Francisco alley, and Joe Martini (Tony Curtis), a rookie traffic cop and the priest’s best friend, resigns from the force to solve the crime. To do so, he ingratiates himself with the man he’s identified as a suspect, Sylvio Malatesta (Gilbert Roland), working for him and living in an extra bedroom in his house. And thus Joe falls in love with Sylvio’s sister Anna (Marisa Pavan). All three leads are excellent: Roland is especially strong, giving little indication of whether he is or isn’t the killer. The ending is quite a surprise. ★★★★ (YT)

*

The Choppers (dir. Leigh Jason, 1961). Inane junk that’s not quite bad enough to be good. We’re meant to understand that a gang of teenaged boys can siphon the gas out of a car, put back just enough gas to make the car run out on a deserted road, strip the car when the driver walks to a gas station, and sequester what they’ve stripped in the back of a poultry truck while one teen watches from a distance and warns of danger via walkie-talkie. My favorite line, apropos of nothing else in the movie: “She never puts anything on a sandwich to make it swallow easy — no butter, no nothin’.” These young hoods would pair well with the girl gang of The Violent Years. ★★ (YT)

*

Bodyguard (dir. Richard Fleischer, 1948). Lawrence Tierney was already known for off-screen brawling, so it’s no wonder that the movie begins with his character, suspended police detective Mike Carter, slugging his lieutenant and shouting “I can explain!” as his fellow cops restrain him. The story is thin: the suspended Carter serves as a bodyguard for the endangered head of a meatpacking company, and mayhem ensues. Much of the backstory speeds by in a few lines of dialogue, and the movie seems to have suffered significant cutting, reducing its coherence and removing what was likely a gruesome ending in a meatpacking plant. Priscilla Lane is on hand as Mike’s resourceful girlfriend Doris Brewster, though how she puts up with her feral beau is an open question. ★★ (TCM)

*

Goodfellas (dir. Martin Scorcese, 1990). I’m not a great fan of Mafia movies, but the dark comedy of this one suits me. Robert DeNiro, Ray Liotta, Joe Pesci, Lorraine Bracco, and Paul Sorvino star in the story of a Brooklyn youth, Henry Hill (Liotta), who becomes a somebody in the world of crime before ending up a nobody — but an alive nobody. What led me to watch this movie for the first time in many years: a clip of Joe Pesci as Tommy DeVito, telling a story in a way that I suspect spoke strongly to Donald Trump, who has named Goodfellas among his favorite movies. The picture of gangsterhood this movie presents, of outer-borough men who do whatever they want, take whatever they want, and brook no opposition would no doubt speak strongly to the disgraced ex-president. ★★★★ (F)

*

Jennifer (dir. Joel Newton, 1953). Undeservedly obscure, I think. Lonely Agnes Langsley (Ida Lupino) signs on a caretaker to a deserted estate whose last caretaker, Jennifer, seems to have disappeared, leaving behind a diary and other personal effects. What happened to Jennifer, and what might the estate’s owner (Howard Duff) or a schlubby grocery clerk (Robert Nichols) have to do with it? A modest, spooky production with strong Rebecca vibes and brilliant cinematography by James Wong Howe — just look at that shadow creeping snakelike up the steps. ★★★★ (YT)


*

Trial (dir. Mark Robson, 1955). Glenn Ford plays David Blake, a law professor who is told to beef up his credentials with some courtroom experience; thus he ends up defending Angel Chavez (Rafael Campos, Morales in The Blackboard Jungle), a Mexican-American teenager accused of causing the death of a white girl who fled and died of a heart attack after she and he necked. Racism and legal corruption are at the heart of the story, with Blake’s new employer (Arthur Kennedy) looking to exploit the case by turning Chavez into a found-guilty martyr to be exploited by an American Communist organization. I wonder whether Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952) influenced Don Mankiewicz’s novel Trial (1955) and this screenplay: the picture of an organization exploiting and abandoning is unmistakably similar. With Dorothy McGuire as a sharp secretary and Juano Hernandez as a judge who takes no guff from anyone. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Gambit (dir. Ronald Neame, 1966). An amusing game of cat and mouse and cat and mouse and cat and mouse. Michael Caine is an aspiring criminal who hatches a plot to steal an ancient bust of a Chinese empress with the help of a showgirl (Shirley MacLaine) who bears a remarkable resemblance to the dead wife of the bust’s owner (Herbert Lom). The pleasure in this movie comes from seeing the many differences between the perfect criminal scheme, as Caine’s character envisions it, and its execution. Tricks abounding, all in an Orientalist “East.” ★★★ (TCM)

*

Convicted (dir. Henry Levin, 1950). “A man’s dead — somebody’s gotta pay for it”: that would be Joe Hufford (Glenn Ford), who killed a politician’s son in a bar fight and gets sent up for manslaughter. Joe’s life becomes more interesting when the DA who prosecuted him (Broderick Crawford) becomes the new, remarkably benevolent warden, and the DA’s adult daughter (Dorothy Malone) comes along to live on the prison premises (what?). The prison parts of the picture are solid, with Millard Mitchell as an inmate with nothing to lose. But long before the story is over, it spirals into romantic ridiculousness. ★★ (YT)

*

The Locket (dir. John Brahm, 1946). Childhood deprivation and humiliation help shape the adult Nancy (Laraine Day), a beautiful woman with a deeply disordered personality. She’s a destroyer of lives, one after another, in a story that takes shapes as a flashback within a flashback within a flashback. Robert Mitchum shines as a painter and Cassandra (unheeded prophet). Extraordinary noir cinematography by Nicholas Musuraca. ★★★★ (TCM)

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Domestic comedy

“What does this guy have his high beam on?”

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[Only one headlight. “What does”: not a typo. More like Brooklynese.]

Domestic comedy

“I realize that’s a shallow thing to say, but I think it’s a valid shallow thing to say.”

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Allay!

[A Glencairn Whisky Glass was sitting on the counter — might it get knocked over? They are not cheap.]

“I’ll allay your fears and wash it.”

“No, it's fine.”

“I’m gonna allay! I’ll allay!”

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Domestic comedy

“If we had a dog, and if we put our mailbox down by the front step, then the dog could get the mail for us.”

“Those are two pretty big if s.”

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Domestic comedy

“I have no desire to sleep with Marcus Aurelius.”

“And he has no desire to sleep with you. Or if he does, he’s praying to get rid of it.”

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Domestic comedy

[Upon returning from a partial — partial indeed — eclipse.]

“It’s dark in the house.”

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Domestic comedy

[The Salada teabag tag read: “Crashers at the boat party just barge in.”]

“God, it’s like being stuck in a room with a bad version of me.”

“How do you think the other teabags feel?”

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[Did you know that Salada is still a brand? I didn’t. The tea is not very good. But each bag has a tag with a punny or fortune-cookie-like sentence that reminds me of the little fillers in Parade or Reader’s Digest. When we found a box of Salada in a nearby salvage grocery store (weird adventures in shopping), I had to buy it — the box, not the store.]

Domestic comedy

[Passing by storefronts.]

“Think of all the money we’ve saved on dry cleaning.”

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[That is, we’ve almost never needed it.]

Twelve movies

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

Temptation (dir. Irving Pichel, 1946). Haute melodrama and Orientalism. Merle Oberon plays Ruby, a disreputable woman married to egyptologist Nigel Armine (George Brent). An affair with the dashing Mahoud Baroudi (Charles Korvin) makes for great danger for Ruby and her husband. Paul Lukas does well as a doctor and friend to Nigel, and it’s fun to see Charles Korvin (Carlos Sanchez, the mambo dancer in The Honeymooners) in another pre-TV role. ★★★ (YT)

*

Account Rendered (dir. Peter Graham Scott, 1957). Philandering Lucille Ainsworth (Ursula Howells) is found dead, and everyone’s a suspect: her husband, his banker, a would-be suitor, a painter, and a female friend. The movie’s strong point is its plotting: the details pointing to each person’s guilt are carefully chosen and made to count. The acting is sometimes weak, and the scenes between Howells and her painter-lover (John Van Eyssen) are unconvincing.But Honor Blackman shines as Lucille’s friend, a friend with a secret of her own. ★★★ (YT)

*

Manhandled (dir. Lewis R. Foster, 1949). A lurid title for a fine whodunit. Alan Napier (6′6″) is a “British author” who dreams of killing his philandering wife; Harold Vermilyea is the author’s tiny psychiatrist; Dorothy Lamour is the psychiatrist’s secretary; Dan Duryea is an one-man detective and collections agency and the secretary’s boyfriend; Art Smith is the police detective investigating the murder of the philandering wife; Sterling Hayden is an insurance man in search of the wife’s missing jewels. Tightly plotted, with plausible suspects, some clever camera work, and several surprises along the way. A bonus: the squalor of the Duryea apartment/office, with a hamster running on a wheel at all hours. ★★★ (YT)

*

The Immortal Story (dir. Orson Welles, 1968). In Macao, a wealthy merchant, Mr. Clay (Welles), seeks to make real a story he once heard of a wealthy old man who pays a sailor to impregnate the old man’s wife. So the merchant’s bookkeeper (Roger Coggio) is dispatched to find a cast, so to speak: the daughter (Jeanne Moreau) of Clay’s former business partner, and a Danish sailor (Norman Eshley). A surprisingly tender interlude in bed follows. With Clay seated, immobile, in a great chair, I take this short film (from a story by Isak Dinesen) to be an allegory of filmmaking: a director makes words into a picture. ★★★ (CC)

*

Across the Bridge (dir. Ken Annakin, 1957). “I want to tell you something: what you think is the end for me is often only the beginning”: so says Carl Schaffner (Rod Steiger) a German-born British businessman who flees the United States for Mexico after embezzling company funds and switches identities (don’t ask how) with another passenger on a train. But when Schaffner discovers whose passport he now carries, his troubles really begin. From a story by Graham Greene, this movie is a tour de force for Steiger,for a dog aptly named Dolores, and for the city of Lora del Rio, Spain, where the movie’s Mexico scenes were filmed. Is this movie as little known as I think it is? ★★★★ (YT)

*

The Impossible Years (dir. Michael Gordon, 1968). A truly, madly, deeply unfunny sex comedy. David Niven is Jonathan KIngsley, a professor of psychology with a teenaged daughter, Linda (Cristina Ferrare), whose wild behavior threatens his promotion (that behavior amounts to carrying a sign at a campus protest with “Free Speech” on one side and something on the other that we can only guess at, since no one will say it aloud). The movie is both prudish and prurient, with Linda’s virginity or lack thereof a preoccupation of her parents: Prof. Kingsley even checks his daughter’s status with her doctor, who’s played by Ozzie Nelson. As a document of a vanished white middle-American idea of comedy, it’s a valuable document (it was a box-office hit); as a movie, it’s dreadful. ★ (TCM)

*

The Soft Skin (dir. François Truffaut, 1964). An affair and its aftermath: Pierre Lachenay (Jean Desailly) is a public intellectual (writing books, editing a journal, lecturing in sold-out auditoriums), a married man having an affair with Nicole, a flight attendant (the ill-fated Françoise Dorléac). Pierre’s obsession with Nicole (haunting her airport), his professional obligations (dinners, meetings), his insistence on secrecy (this hotel, not that one), Nicole’s landlord, her concierge, her father: all impinge on the affair. And then there’s Pierre’s wife Franca (Nelly Benedetti). The movie maintains a nervous pace with quick cuts as it moves to a satisfying conclusion straight out of the movies. ★★★★ (CC)

[Google’s capsule description: “Heartfelt, sweet, and sentimental.” So much for artificial intelligence.]

*

Undercurrent (dir. Vincente Minnelli, 1946). Dowdy Ann Hamilton (Katharine Hepburn), a scientist’s daughter, meets and marries dashing businessman and inventor Alan Garroway (Robert Taylor) and they live happily ever — no, only for a while. Because something’s not right: Alan’s sudden angers and odd lies spell trouble for this marriage. And that’s where Robert Mitchum comes in. A noirish gothic story with overtones of Jane Eyre and Rebecca, and great stuff even if you’re not a Katharine Hepburn fan. ★★★★ (CC)

*

The Sky’s the Limit (dir. Edward H. Griffith, 1943). I’d call it a less Art Deco, less glamorous, more “American” vehicle for Fred Astaire, who plays a Flying Tiger pilot who appears to have done some singing and dancing. He meets and woos a newspaper photographer who also sings and dances (Joan Leslie), but he keeps his identity a secret, until — well, until. The musical numbers here (with songs by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer) are few, but they’re great, especially Astaire’s drunken bar-top dance to “One for My Baby.” I have to point out that this movie, as watched by the poet Alice Notley on late-night TV, became the stuff of her husband Ted Berrigan’s last poem, “This Will Be Her Shining Hour,” which may be found online in the November 1983 Poetry Project Newsletter: it’s domestic comedy at 4:00 a.m. ★★★★ (TCM)

[The song “My Shining Hour” runs through the movie.]

*

Undercover Girl (dir. Joseph Pevney, 1950). “I’m not giving up my uniform for an apron”: Alexis Smith is a rookie cop who goes undercover as a drug dealer to find the men who murdered her father, himself a crooked cop. Smith is fine playing two personalities, the rookie Chris Miller and the louche, mink-wearing Sal Willis, and Gladys George has a memorable turn as Chris’s unsuspecting informant Liz Crow, a once-glamorous underworld gal now dying in a hospital bed. The bad guys add value: Gerald Mohr as the cheaply suave kingpin, Edmond Ryan as a doctor (treating “internal diseases of men and women”), Mel Archer as a big silent guy with a neck brace, Royal Dano as a needy, seedy hood with pin-up girls on his ties. Many tense moments as Chris’s cover is nearly blown and, finally, blown. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (dir. Gordon Douglas, 1950). It’s a variation on White Heat, with James Cagney as Ralph Cotter, alias Paul Murphy, a psychopathic gangster whose killing spree begins as he escapes from a prison farm. This movie is full of colorful characters: the sister of a railroaded convict (Barbara Payton), a radio repairman who’s in way over his head (Steve Brodie), a rich girl (Helena Carter) who’s the disciple of a quack metaphysician (Herbert Heyes), and, especially, a dissolute lawyer (Luther Adler) eager to join in any criminal scheme.It’s amusing to see Ward Bond and Barton MacLane, cops in The Maltese Falcon, as cops on the wrong side of the law here. Best moments: Ralph pretending to be normal. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Growing Up Female (dir. Jim Klein and Julia Reichert, 1971). A short documentary with one girl and five women talking about their lives. To watch it is to recognize how far our culture has come and how far back some forces at work in our culture want to take us. A twelve-year-old talks matter-of-factly about how she can run as fast as or faster than some boys; a guidance counselor explains that a wife is responsible for all childcare and housekeeping; a cosmetologist declares that a woman’s needs are to be fulfilled only by her husband. And a mother of young children: “You get so that you think you’re gonna scream if you can’t talk to an adult.” ★★★★ (CC)

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Domestic comedy

“Too bad we don’t have the Container Store.”

“Our town isn’t big enough to hold one.”

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[But we know, too, that more things in which to store things is not a solution.]

Domestic comedy

[The subject was breakfast.]

“It’s a good restaurant. It has these things called ‘eggs’?”

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[Please hear the second sentence with a purposeful bit of uptalk.]

Domestic comedy

“Is it raining on the phone, or outside?”

“On the phone.”

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Twelve movies

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

Don’t Look Back (dir. D.A. Pennebaker, 1967). A documentary made from footage of Bob Dylan’s 1965 English tour. I watched out of a sense of responsibility to cultural history and was deeply underwhelmed. The robotic strumming, the wheezing harmonica, the typing while Joan Baez sings, the snarkitude at everyone’s expense, especially Donovan’s: Dylan strikes me as an emperor in need of a good haberdashery. Strange: the first words he says on camera are “Did you see my cane?” — and this is before his motorcycle accident. ★★ (TCM)

*

The Clouded Yellow (dir. Ralph Thomas, 1950). British intelligence agent David Somers (Trevor Howard) gets the boot after one mistake and takes a short-term job cataloging butterflies at a country house. Thus the title, suggesting, perhaps, migratory movement and, certainly, nets and fragile beauty. When Sophie Malraux (Jean Simmons), the allegedly disturbed niece of the house, is accused of murder, David takes her on the lam, and through a grand tour of English landscapes. A movie made of wonderful Hitchcockian episodes, à la The 39 Steps, but there’s little chemistry between Howard — who seems himself an avuncular figure — and Simmons. ★★★ (YT)

*

Footsteps in the Night (dir. Jean Yarborough, 1957). A man is found dead in a Los Angeles motel room, and suspicion falls on a neighbor with a gambling problem whom the dead man inveigled into long nights of cards. The movie plays like an hour-long episode of Dragnet, with two detectives cracking occasional jokes and plodding along from place to place until there’s a bit of high drama at the final minutes. Worth watching for brief appearances by James Flavin (veteran of hundreds of movies) and Harry Tyler (Bert the short-order cook in The Grapes of Wrath). Both men must have understood that there are no small roles, only small actors. ★★ (YT)

*

I Confess (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1953). Wearing a priest’s cassock, a church caretaker in Quebec City (O.E. Hasse) commits murder and confesses to the very priest whose cassock he wore, Father Michael Logan (Montgomery Clift), who’s required by church law to keep the confession secret. Logan of course soon becomes a suspect, and his relationship with an old sweetheart (Anne Baxter), suggests he had good reason to kill. With Clift as a man with a secret to hide, there’s a strange meta quality to the story. Difficult to see much chemistry between him and the hammy Baxter; Hasse and Dolly Haas are more genuinely desperate partners. ★★★ (TCM)

[In the Small World department: Dolly Haas was married to Al Hirschfeld. Our friends Seymour Barab and Margie King were their friends.]

*

The Secret Fury (dir. Mel Ferrer, 1950). Someone’s turned up the gaslight — but who? Deeply strange, with Claudette Colbert as Ellen Ewing, a classical pianist who’s about to marry some guy (Robert Ryan), and as the ceremony gets underway, a stranger stands up to say that Ellen is already married. Three movies in one: a melodrama, a courtroom drama, and a very dark noir. Paul Kelly is great as a district attorney; and look for VIvian Vance as a hotel maid. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Hell Is a City (dir. Val Guest, 1960). When an escaped criminal (John Crawford) heads home to Manchester and pulls off a robbery and murder, it’s up to Inspector Harry Martineau (Stanley Baker) to track him down — or to climb up after him. Location filming and a strong cast (Donald Pleasance, Vanda Godsell, Billie Whitelaw) make for a terrific movie. I suspect the strong influence of The Naked City (the movie) and Naked City (the television series). What clinches it for me: several scenes of domestic tension between Martineau and his wife Julia (Maxine Audley) — in keeping with the Naked practice of showing cops in their private lives. ★★★★ (YT)

*

This Is the Bowery (dir. Gunther von Fritsch, 1941). A short film from the series The Passing Parade, with John Nesbitt’s narration. It’s a ludicrously or poignantly optimistic look at life on the Bowery, with one man (Charles St. John) resolving to give the straight life one more try. Hearty soup and strong coffee served at the Bowery Mission help him on his way. Filmed on location — the real street and its semi-residents, many of them looking remarkably well kempt. ★★★ (TCM)

*

How Do You Like the Bowery? (dir. Dan Halas and Alan Raymond, 1960). A short documentary by NYU students Halas and Raymond. Here the men of the Bowery speak, and the urgency with which some of them address their interviewer makes me think of the souls in Dante’s hell. It’s one memorable face after another. My Bowery triptych would have these two short films flanking Lionel Rogosin’s full-length 1956 movie On the Bowery. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Suddenly (dir. Lewis Allen, 1954). A damaged war vet (Frank Sinatra) has contracted to assassinate the president of the United States, traveling to the town of Suddenly and taking over an isolated house from which to shoot a rifle. It’s up to the people held captive in the house to stop him: a grandfather (James Gleason), his war-widow daughter (Nancy Gates), her young son (Kim Charney), the town sheriff (Sterling Hayden), and a TV repairman (James Lilburn). The movie is almost all plot, with a brief touch of romance and a few hints of the vet’s feral war record. So strange to watch and think about Sinatra’s fleeting friendship with John F. Kennedy; so strange to watch and think about one the names Donald Trump used when making phony calls to the press: the vet’s name, John Barron. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Flowing Gold (dir. Alfred E. Green, 1940). Bromance, romance, and fossil fuels: a wanted man (John Garfield) shows up at an oil field, saves the foreman’s life (Pat O’Brien), and falls in love with an oilman’s daughter (Frances Farmer). Aside from a spectacular explosion, everything here is predictable. The reason to watch is Frances Farmer, who looks like someone from at least fifty years in the future. A bonus: Cliff Edwards, “Ukulele Ike,” the voice of Jiminy Cricket. ★★★ (TCM)

*

Fyre (dir. Chris Smith, 2019). My daughter made a joke about a cheese sandwich, and suddenly I was looking up the details of the notorious Fyre music festival, a scam perpetrated by Billy McFarland, an entrepreneur who promised festivalgoers exclusive lodgings and fine food on a private island. Instead, the marks got surplus tents, rainsoaked mattresses, and cheese sandwiches in foam containers. And now McFarland is out of prison and planning Fyre Festival II. A con man, exposed as such, and trying a second time: I wonder if McFarland has met a leading Republican contender. ★★★★ (N)

*

Two O’Clock Courage (dir. Anthony Mann, 1945). A pick for TCM’s Noir Alley, and an Anthony Mann movie we’d never heard of — and it starts off so well, with fog and foghorns, and a shadow (Tom Conway) staggering away from the camera. A perky cabdriver (Ann Rutherford) drives onto the screen, and the story turns into something like a radio whodunit with touches of comedy, as the cabbie helps the amnesiac shadow sort out clues to his identity and prove he’s no murderer. A fun element: the story takes place in a city that never sleeps, with clothing stores open all night, and landladies awake and fully dressed at all hours. A bonus: Jane Greer in her first speaking role, as a drunken actress. ★★★ (TCM)

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Domestic comedy

[Trump’s lawyers have been moaning about how many documents they have to read: War and Peace seventy-eight times a day, &c., &c.]

“Don’t these people have staffs? Or staves?”

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[Only the composer in our household would think of the musical plural.]

The Republic of Laundry

“I’ve become a model citizen in the Republic of Laundry.”

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[Elaine is the prime minister.]

Unchained medley

We were driving past an Applebee’s, so I gave out with a faux-spirited rendition of the Cheers theme, a song not long ago in use in the chain’s television commercials, ending with “You wanna go where everybody knows your name.”

And Elaine sang in reply, “I wanna be where the people are.”

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