Thanks!

I find an item online for my dad, and what do I get?

Thanks, Dad!

[Ink and watercolor by James Leddy, 2007.]

More by James Leddy
Abe's shades
Boo!
Happy holidays
Hardy mums

"Bring on the fall"

My local newspaper has its finger on the pulse of the community, such as it (the pulse) is:

More than 50 percent of those who responded to last week's poll are ready to "bring on the fall weather and activities."

In addition to the 54 percent who are ready for fall, 16 percent said they miss summer already, while 21 percent said they like both seasons.

And 9 percent said they hardly notice the difference.

Related post
Odes to autumn

9/11/01

[Photograph from a New-York Historical Society exhibit, "Here is New York: Remembering 9/11." Photographer uncredited.]

The members of the emergency crew from Rescue Company 2 (Brooklyn) died on September 11, 2001.

Rescue 2 (FDNY)
Here is New York: Remembering 9/11 (New-York Historical Society)
Remembering Lower Manhattan’s Day of Horror, Without Pomp or Circumstance (New York Times)
On Display, the Agonized Objects and Photos of 9/11 (New York Times)

Musical-comedy pencils

Ella Peterson (Judy Holliday) to Jeffrey Moss (Dean Martin):

"When I went to high school, I'd do anything to keep from doing my homework. Mostly I'd sharpen pencils. You know the yellow kind that says Ticonderoga on it? Well, I'd sharpen it to the Ticonderog, and then to the Ticonder, and then to the Ticond, and then to the Tic, and then to the Ti, and then to the T. And then I'd have to start on another pencil."

Bells Are Ringing (1960), screenplay by Betty Comden and Adolph Green

Bells Are Ringing, now packaged as a dopey-looking DVD, is anything but dopey. Smart songs, witty repartee, arch double-entendres, rotary phones, a telephone exchange name as part of a song lyric (PLaza 0-4433), a betting operation disguised as a classical record label, and a terrific cast (including Frank Gorshin as a Brando-like Method actor). Judy Holliday, in her last film, is brilliant.

Bells Are Ringing (Amazon)

Related post
Film noir pencils

Andrew Sullivan's advice

Just like yours, my beard has been getting a little gray on the chin and sides recently. And it really does age one. . . .

But all is not lost, your Mullahship.

Andrew Sullivan offers some hair care advice:

Queer Eye for the Jihadist Guy (The Daily Dish)

Film noir pencils

Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson) to Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray):

"A desk job. Is that all you can see in it? Just a hard chair to park your pants on from nine to five. Just a pile of papers to shuffle around, and five sharp pencils and a scratch pad to make figures on, with maybe a little doodling on the side. That's not the way I see it, Walter. To me a claims man is a surgeon, and that desk is an operating table, and those pencils are scalpels and bone chisels. And those papers are not just forms and statistics and claims for compensation. They're alive, they're packed with drama, with twisted hopes and crooked dreams. A claims man, Walter, is a doctor and a blood-hound and a cop and a judge and a jury and a father confessor, all in one."

Double Indemnity (1944), screenplay by Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler

A related post
The dowdy world on film

Everything I always wanted to ask about Grape-Nuts

My son Ben gave me the above advertisement, which he found at a garage sale. (Thanks, Ben!) The plastic sheet that protected the ad is labeled 1920s. I have a bowl of sturdy, appetizing Grape-Nuts almost every morning, so this ad has found a good home.

I'm wondering: this scene carries a sexual implication, doesn't it? The locked eyes seem to bespeak a desire for more than cereal. But does "Only time for Grape-Nuts" mean that there's no time for more than breakfast, or does it mean that time already spent in the bedroom has left no time for a more elaborate breakfast? It's possible of course that this ad might only be a comment on modern times and the death of cooking. The locked eyes though suggest more.

And who are these people anyway? Are they both headed off to work? (Would a woman have dressed in this way around the house?) If the couple are a husband and wife, why is he dressing next to what looks like a single bed? And why is his coat hanging on a chair?

[Readers of a certain age will recognize in this post's title a play on the title of David Reuben's book Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask) (1969).]

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Alkalize with Alka-Seltzer
"Radios, it is"

The one after 99,999

Orange Crate Art received its one-hundred-thousandth visit this morning, from someone doing a Google search in Seoul: how to write email professor. It's that time of year: 270 of the last 500 visits to this blog have been to How to e-mail a professor.

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_
L (50,000 visits)

Television in the background

Having the television on as ambient noise can yield unexpected rewards. The following line floated up this afternoon to startle and amuse, from the Bonanza episode "San Francisco Holiday":

"I'm not offering you a drink; I'm offering you a sailor."

The context: two ranch-hands have been shanghaied.

Other delights of this episode: guest appearances by Richard Deacon (Fred Rutherford on Leave It To Beaver, Mel Cooley on The Dick Van Dyke Show), David White (Larry Tate from Bewitched), and best of all, Tor Johnson (Inspector Clay from Plan 9 from Outer Space).

Proust: "the self-identity of things"

An interesting passage to think about in relation to those rooms in which things always look the same — this lamp here, that vase there:

I became more clearly aware of my own transformations by contrasting them with the self-identity of things. Yet we become accustomed to these as we do to people, and when, suddenly, we recall the different meaning that they carried, and then, once they had lost all meaning, the events, very different from those of today, for which they had been the setting, the diversity of the actions performed beneath the same ceiling, between the same glass-fronted bookcases, the change in our hearts and in our lives which that diversity implies seems further enhanced by the immutable permanence of the décor, reinforced by the unity of place.

Marcel Proust, Sodom and Gomorrah, translated by John Sturrock (New York: Penguin, 2002), 510

All Proust posts