Greek diners on the wane

Dark prophecy:

“When Greeks get out of diners, there will no more be diners.”

Diners in Changing Hands; Greek Ownership on the Wane (New York Times)

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Signage problem

Noticed on a state road, in front of a high school, nailed to telephone poles, two sets of signs celebrating, one word at a time, a team's journey to "state." It seems that the signmakers were working without a shared sense of message.

Five yellow signs:

WE    ARE    PROUD    OF    YOU.

And then five white ones:

HONK    IF    YOU    DO    TOO.

Yes, I honked.

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Necker cube

Drawn in the margins of eleventyteen loose-leaf pages. Did you know that it has a name?

[Eleventyteen: "many," my father-in-law's coinage.]

Necker cube (Wikipedia)
Animated Necker cube (Mark Newbold)

Wriggley's and Wrigley's gum

I don't know how long I've had this practical joke or where it came from. It's been sitting for some time in a box with other dowdy objects — a package of Blanco y Negro cigarette papers, a box of Dennison "Merchandise — 4th Class Mail" gummed labels, a Traveler's Expense Book (with an illustration of a hatted businessman, an airplane at his shoulder, an automobile emerging from behind his upper arm).

What I do know is that the chances for Wriggley deception will soon vanish, as Wrigley has moved to repackage its Spearmint gum and other "traditional" brands. The Chicago Tribune reports:

With the repackaging, Extra and the traditional brands [including Doublemint, Juicy Fruit, and Spearmint] will come in a flat, square pack rather than a bulkier rectangle. The "Slim Packs" are essentially the same as those for Wrigley's "5" brand, a sugarless gum introduced last year that's been a hit, particularly with younger consumers.

The new pack is aimed at being a better fit in a consumer's pocket or purse. It's also a way for Wrigley to showcase old brands in a trendier format.

The changes are a response to the success of what the Trib calls "a key gummaking rival," Cadbury, the maker of Dentyne and Trident.

[Update: I have a vague memory of my son getting this novelty from a friend in elementary school. Ben, may I offer you a piece of gum?]

Wrigley's Spearmint design, 1913-2004 (Wrigley)

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Inept political metaphor of the day

From an article on Eliot Spitzer's resignation:

"I go forward with the belief, as others have said, that as human beings our greatest glory consists not in never failing, but in rising every time we fall."

For Spitzer, that will likely be one toe at a time.

How does a person rise one toe at a time?

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Yes, they can

It hit me last night after I thought about Geraldine Ferraro's appalling comments: Hillary Clinton's emphasis on "a hiring decision" as a metaphor for the election now seems to have been a preparation for an increasingly overt effort to cast Barack Obama as an affirmative-action applicant and thereby draw upon the presumed resentments of economically hard-pressed white voters. Here's a job: are you gonna let the black guy take it away?

This effort of a piece with the claims that Obama's supporters are "latte-drinking, Prius-driving, Birkenstock-wearing trust-fund babies" or, more concisely, "the latte-sipping crowd." "Us" v. "them," racial warfare and class warfare: what a way to run a 21st-century Democratic primary campaign. Every time I think that Clinton and her surrogates can't go any lower, I'm reminded:

Yes, they can.

Ept simile of the day

Elaine on some deer crossing the street: "They were walking single file, like the Beatles."

[Yes, ept is a word: "Used as a deliberate antonym of 'inept': adroit, appropriate, effective" (Oxford English Dictionary).]

Overheard

An old man looking at a men's room door:

"Wheelchairs — why do they always put men in wheelchairs?"

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Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

Elaine and I watched Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) last night — it seems an appropriate movie to go back to in an election year. No, we haven't mistaken Jefferson Smith (James Stewart¹) for Barack Obama; there's a world of difference between the wide-eyed Boy Ranger from parts unknown and our senator. But there's much to ponder in the story of a man who stands on principle while those who hold and seek to continue holding power engage in, well, the politics of personal destruction. Here's what aide Clarissa Saunders (Jean Arthur) tells Smith as they sit in the dark in front of the Lincoln Memorial:

"Your friend Mr. Lincoln had his Taylors and Paines. So did every other man who ever tried to lift his thought up off the ground. Odds against them didn't stop those men; they were fools that way. All the good that ever came into this world came from fools with faith like that. You know that, Jeff. You can't quit now. Not you. They aren't all Taylors and Paines in Washington. That kind just throw big shadows, that's all. You didn't just have faith in Paine or any other living man. You had faith in something bigger than that. You had plain, decent, everyday, common rightness, and this country could use some of that. Yeah, so could the whole cock-eyed world, a lot of it."

And how.

There's plenty of Capra-corn in this film (think of Harry Carey as the president of the Senate, smiling and chuckling at Smith's boyish ways, or the Boy Rangers and their printing presses). But the "big shadows" are real and dangerous: a press that shapes opinion by manufacturing reality (reality is Taylor-made), a political machine that employs any means necessary to defeat its enemies, and politicians who are unapologetically cynical. "You can't count on people voting. Half the time they don't vote anyway. That's how states and empires have been built since time began," says the Silver Knight, Senator Joseph Harrison Paine (Claude Rains).

And there are several scenes of utter emotional desolation. This image of Smith, a drunk Saunders, and Saunders' also-drunk would-be husband Diz (Thomas Mitchell) in Smith's barely furnished office looks more like Gregg Toland's deep-focus than Capra:



And this shot of Saunders and Diz weaving down the hallway (and abandoning Smith) makes me think of the Empire Hotel (Judy Barton's building) in another Stewart movie, Hitchcock's Vertigo:



Okay, you can go rent the movie if you like.

¹ James, not Jimmy? Yes, that how he's billed.

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New Ephemera

[From the brochure "Come to New Ephemera."]

Amanda Spielman's New Ephemera thus far exists only in brochure form:

Come Visit New Ephemera (.pdf download)