The dowdy world on film

I sometimes refer to what I call "the dowdy world" -- meaning modern American culture as it was before certain forms of technology redefined everyday life. The dowdy world is a place with dictaphones, rotary phones, afternoon newspapers, "radio programs," and telegrams. In the dowdy world, a fountain pen is an everyday tool, not a jewel-laden collector's item. And yes, there are pay phones. In the dowdy world, even a crime boss has to drop a nickel to make an important call.

I sometimes like watching a movie just for the pleasure of getting in touch with the dowdy world in all its black-and-white splendor. Few movies have given me as much of this odd pleasure as The House on 92nd Street, a 1945 film about the FBI infiltration of a Nazi spy-ring in Manhattan. It's part thriller, part police-procedural, told in documentary fashion with a solemn narrative voiceover. The movie was recently released on DVD, billed as film noir, which it's not. (But noir sells.)

The House on 92nd Street pleases even with its opening credits -- presented in the form of a typed document, the pages held at the top by a big shiny clasp. As the scenes go by, one sees file cabinets, file trays, card files, desktop blotters, rocking blotters, desk sets, ledgers, teletype machines, typing stands, pencils, fountain pens, and rubber stamps. These objects are sometimes the focal points of scenes, as when a morgue attendant reads through the pocket notebook found on a body and the camera closes in on its pages. At other times, these objects -- which may well have been virtually invisible to a 1945 audience -- take on a curious importance just by virtue of their antiquity. Look at that fountain pen, I say to myself. It's right there, so big that it's easy to identify as a Waterman.

The follow-up movie The Street with No Name (1948) has similar delights. In this film the FBI is after crooks, not Nazis. A teletype machine -- spitting out a directive signed "J. Edgar Hoover" -- is the first speaking character in the movie. An enormous wooden card file sits on the desk of a bail bondsman. Look at that card file, I say to myself. It's the bondsman's database, and he pops the hood and retrieves a card in less time than it would take to point and click. A stapler, the dowdy kind, shiny steel, with a knob to push down on, is strangely prominent in a shot of an FBI staffer. And everyone seems to have a pencil at hand -- or else is gesturing for one, as when Inspector Briggs (Lloyd Nolan), taking a phone call, needs to get down an address. He then speaks the words, telegram-style, as he writes them:

"Anderson . . . Manufacturing . . . Company. Fraser . . . Road at . . . Caron."

*

In 2008 I made a post with screenshots of the Dixon Ticonderogas of The House on 92nd Street: Is there a pencil in The House?

I shall now click my mouse and send these words from the dowdy world into the future.

All "dowdy world" posts (via Pinboard)

Happy birthday, Clark Terry

Trumpeter and flugelhornist Clark Terry is 85 today. Happy birthday, Clark Terry.

I was lucky to talk with Clark at length some years back, when I did an hour-long interview with him on the FM station at my university. It was a high point in my life -- the chance to ask questions of a great musician and Ellingtonian.

You can learn more about Clark Terry and see his touring schedule at his website: clarkterry.com.

Larry David's notebook

From a New Yorker piece on Larry David and Curb Your Enthusiasm:

Like many comedians, Larry David carries a pocket notebook for writing down ideas. "You're in a parking garage, and Larry’s wallet is empty--he forgot to ask his assistant to go to the cash machine," [Robert] Weide, who directs several episodes a year, says. "So he says, 'Shit, I have no money for the valet--could you give me a few bucks?' So you find yourself giving money to Larry David, who has a few bucks. And then out comes the little notebook."

"What would I have done if he hadn’t been there?" David said. "That could have been funny."

The notebook is a ratty brown thing that looks as if it might have cost forty-nine cents at a stationery store. Its pages are covered with David’s illegible scrawl.

Ratty? I think not. The notebook, as seen in Curb Your Enthusiasm, seems to be a Boorum memo book, made by Esselte Pendaflex. The photograph above is of one of mine ($1.55 whenever I bought it, not all that long ago). Sad to say, I can't find one reference to this well-made item online. Has it become, like the Blackwing pencil, a part of the past?

Larry David's notebook is prominent in "The Wire" (first season, episode six of Curb Your Enthusiasm). It's so important to its owner that written inside it is an offer of a $500 reward for its return. Trouble comes when a neighbor finds the notebook and wants Larry to make good on the reward.

Link: James Kaplan, "Angry Middle-Aged Man"
(from the New Yorker, 19 January 2004)

Update: A call to Esselte Pendaflex confirms that these notebooks are still available. The person I spoke with (a fan of CYE who didn't know about the notebook connection) said that they can be ordered from Able Office Products (1.800.870.6872).

Update, July 9, 2008: Reader Steve Windham found brown Oxford pocket notebooks for sale here. Thanks, Steve!

Update, April 5, 2012: Steve Windham has found a Roaring Spring Sewn Memo Book that looks very much like the brown notebooks of yore. He also reports one online source, selling notebooks by the case. Thanks again, Steve.

Update, September 7, 2012: Steve Windham has found an online source for single Roaring Springs Sewn Memo Books. Thanks again, again, Steve.

Red Nose Beaujolais

I was surprised to find tonight that Orange Crate Art is the only page that turns up if you're searching for "red nose beaujolais" with either Google or Yahoo. I happened to mention Red Nose Beaujolais (here) in a moment of Thanksgiving reverie. This single-page result is not exactly a Googlewhack, but it is pretty surprising.

If anyone is wondering, Red Nose Beaujolais is a wonderful wine. When my wife and I sample the three or four varieties of Beaujolais nouveau available from our local "wine-merchant" (aka "the liquor store"), we always seem to agree on which one or ones we like best. This year it was Red Nose Beaujolais. You heard it here first.

45/15

Nothing moves me to procrastinate like the prospect of grading dozens of essays. But I've been making great efforts toward getting-things-done instead of putting-things-off. And having just graded 53 essays in a day-and-a-half (yes, I didn't do much else), I can recommend one strategy that's done more than any other to help me get around grading-induced procrastination. Here it is, in all its complexity:

Work for 45 minutes.
Take a break for 15 minutes.
Repeat as necessary.

My 45/15 rule is a variation on a strategy that I saw mentioned by doctoral student Zach Pousman in a MetaFilter thread a few months back on being productive in college. Zach cited PhinisheD, a website for people working on dissertations and theses, and described a 40/20 rule he found there:

Do your work in 40 minute blocks with a twenty minute rest between each. This is a set. Then, if you've got 3 hours between classes or in the afternoon, do 3 sets of work as above. Though you'll only work two hours, you'll get so much more done! Swear.

I didn't like the idea of losing a third of each hour, so I changed things a bit. My 45/15 rule has made grading much more do-able work, by removing the Sisyphean feeling that has always set in when I realize how many papers I still have to grade (20 done, and 33 still to go! O endlessness!). Now I know that in 45 minutes I can take a break.

45/15 also helps by appealing to my left-brained penchant for routine, giving a shape to the blurry hours. Of course, now that I've graded all these papers, I have no routine, and will have to wait until Wednesday, when my first finals come in, to start grading again. Four days with no routine! But I think I can manage.

[If any of my students are reading this post: the essays for the most part were really, really strong. You can get your essay back on Monday or at your final exam.]

John Lennon

9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980

[I've scanned the photo from my 1968 copy of the Beatles' "white album," scratches and all.]

Mozart and tenure

Dear Dean:

This is in response to your suggestion that we appoint Mr. Wolfgang Mozart to our music faculty. The music department appreciates your interest, but the faculty is sensitive about its prerogatives in the selection of new colleagues.

While the list of works and performances the candidate has submitted is very full, it reflects too much activity outside academia. Mr. Mozart does not have an earned doctorate and has very little formal education and teaching experience. There is also significant evidence of personal instability evidenced in his resume. Would he really settle down in a large state university like ours? Would he really be a team player?

This piece seems to circulate among musicans on the net. My wife Elaine received it recently in an e-mail. Its author is unknown, at least to us. You can read it in its entirety via the link.

LINK: "Why Mozart Didn't Get Tenure" (from spiritsound.com)

My other blog is a Moleskine

My longer posts to Orange Crate Art tend to begin in a Moleskine pocket notebook. Yes, my other blog is a Moleskine. (And no, I didn't need to draft this post in a notebook first.)

Above, a partial draft of a post about the permanence and impermanence of things.

Cabbage soup

I was seized by the urge to make soup yesterday. Not to open a can or a packet, but to make soup, cabbage soup. My wife Elaine, who makes wonderful soups, assured me that it would be easy to do. She was right.

My recipe is a "veganed" (I just made up the word) version of Julia Child's recipe for soupe aux choux, a soup which is indeed, as JC calls it, garbure. I left out the salt pork -- ditto the lard rance (a very special "slightly rancid salt pork"), bacon, ham, and confit d'oie (preserved goose), any of which could've taken its place. I added the tomatoes and a vegetable-broth base, and changed the seasoning a bit.

To make this cabbage soup, you will need

some olive oil
2 onions, chopped
2 quarts water
1 tbsp. Better Than Bouillon vegetable base
4 red potatoes, peeled and cut in chunks
1 28-oz. can petite diced tomatoes
2 large carrots, cut into discs
1 cabbage, about 2 lbs., chopped
2 garlic cloves, smashed and chopped
10 peppercorns, smashed
1/4 tsp. marjoram
1/4 tsp. thyme
salt and pepper to taste

1. In a large pot, brown the onions in olive oil.

2. Add all the other ingredients, beginning with the water and potatoes. From there on, the order is pretty arbitrary. (It's just soup.)

3. Cover the pot and let everything come to a boil. Then cook on low-to-medium heat for 90 minutes or so. The timing is pretty flexible. (It's just soup.)

4. Stir and taste every so often, and add some salt and pepper if you like. (I like my soup with lots of pepper.)

5. Serve with the best bread you can muster.

It saddens me to think that many people in the United States of Generica have never tasted homemade soup, the ultimate comfort food. The preparation is simple, but you can wow your loved ones (and yourself) by making a homemade soup.

Smoke Smoke Smoke Smoke

[Spoiler note: There are no great giveaways in what follows. But if you've not seen Smoke and would prefer to know nothing of its content, read no further.]

I just watched Wayne Wang and Paul Auster's film Smoke (1995) four times. I'm teaching it in a class, and I loathe the thought of using class meetings to show a film in 50-minute installments. So I simply scheduled four consecutive nights for students to watch the film, and I ended up watching four times. And in doing so, I noticed details I'd probably never have caught otherwise.

There's a beautifully-made pattern, for instance, in what happens when Paul Benjamin (a novelist, played by William Hurt) answers the door of his Brooklyn apartment. Recently widowed, Paul lives what appears to be a solitary life. Watch what happens when people come to his door.

1. The buzzer buzzes, three times, and Paul continues typing, or trying to type. He finally gets up from his chair--saying "Shit!"--and goes to the door. He speaks into the intercom: "Who is it?" "Rashid." "Who?" "Rashid Cole." It's the young man who saved pedestrian Paul from being hit by a truck not long before. "Come on up," Paul says.

Paul has offered Rashid a place to stay for a couple of nights, but it becomes clear that this solitary man is not happy about sharing his space. After two nights, he asks Rashid to leave. It's clear though that Paul is worried, or at least concerned. From his window, he watches Rashid (who has "seen something he wasn't supposed to see") walk away.

2. There's fervent knocking (the buzzer's broken). Without asking who's there, Paul opens the door, just an inch. The visitor is Rashid's aunt, "sick with worry." She pushes the door open and inquires about her nephew, whose real name, we now learn, is Thomas.

3. A doorbell rings and Paul opens the door--much wider this time. "Ah, it's you," he says. It's Thomas, as he was hoping.

4. Someone is pounding on the door. Paul opens the door wide only to find two hoodlums in search of Thomas, who, luckily, is not in the apartment.

These four small moments show us Paul Benjamin's increasing willingness to let people in, literally--into his apartment, into his life. He checks to see who's there; he opens the door just a bit; and he opens it wide, twice. His openness brings the chance for genuine friendship with a surrogate son (who is himself in search of his father). His openness brings great danger as well (the thugs leave him with a bandaged forehead and an arm in a sling). Nothing in the film works to call attention to these moments--there's no swelling music, no close-up on a hand momentously turning a doorknob. The moments are just there, for a viewer who's paying attention. Once you notice them, you have some new ways of thinking about what happens when Granny Ethel opens her door to "Roger Goodwin" in Auggie Wren's Christmas story.

It's appropriate that Smoke itself should highlight the practice of paying attention, of looking carefully at the same thing again and again. Auggie says when showing Paul his "life's work," "You'll never get it if you don't slow down, my friend." Auggie has been taking a photograph of his corner at 8:00 every morning for the past four thousand mornings. It's appropriate too that the one Paul Benjamin novel we see is titled The Mysterious Barricades. Repeated viewing won't help you to catch that detail, though, or the content of the newspaper page at the film's end. You'll never get those details if you don't use the pause button, my friend.

I'm not sure how many films will reward extended attention in the way that Smoke does. But try with a film that you like--you might be surprised by what you notice.

*

February 7, 2015: I’ve been wondering how I failed to mention François Couperin’s harpsichord piece Les Barricades Mystérieuses [The Mysterious Barricades]. Did I not know about it in 2005. Did Elaine not tell me about it? Here is a performance by Bruno Procopio. Since 2005, I’ve come to love Couperin’s music, via Angela Hewitt’s three discs of the keyboard music.