Ducks amuck

“'In the duck world, San Francisco is almost impossible.'”

Strange sentence. It's from an article on the use of kazoo-like instruments to promote amphibious-vehicle tours in San Francisco:

A Quacking Kazoo Sets Off a Squabble (New York Times)

I'd be remiss if I didn't include a link to the 1953 Merrie Melodies cartoon that gave me my title:

Duck Amuck (YouTube)

I should add that this cartoon is a major influence on John Ashbery's poem "Daffy Duck in Hollywood" (Houseboat Days, 1977).

What's that? I shouldn't?

More on Proust's coffee

Corcellet coffee, that is:

It being an acknowledged fact that French coffee is decidedly superior to that made in England, and as the roasting of the berry is of great importance to the flavour of the preparation, it will be useful and interesting to know how they manage these things in France. In Paris, there are two houses justly celebrated for the flavour of their coffee — La Maison Corcellet and La Maison Royer de Chartres; and to obtain this flavour, before roasting they add to every 3 Ibs. of coffee a piece of butter the size of a nut, and a dessertspoonful of powdered sugar; it is then roasted in the usual manner. The addition of the butter and sugar develops the flavour and aroma of the berry; but it must be borne in mind that the quality of the butter must be of the very best description.

Isabella Beeton, The Book of Household Management; Comprising Information for The Mistress, Housekeeper, Cook, Kitchen-Maid, Butler, Footman, Coachman, Valet, Upper And Under House-Maids, Lady's-Maid, Maid-of-All-Work, Laundry-Maid, Nurse and Nursemaid, Monthly, Wet And Sick Nurses, Etc. Etc. Also, Sanitary, Medical, & Legal Memoranda; with a History of the Origin, Properties, and Uses of All Things Connected with Home Life and Comfort. (London: S.O. Beeton, 1861), 876.

Butter-roasted — who knew? (Not me.)

Vietnamese coffee, it seems, is still butter-roasted — the French colonial influence. Reader, if you can recount a close encounter with butter-roasted coffee, please share.

Given recent posts on Orange Crate Art, I should note that Isabella Beeton, "Mrs. Beeton," was, it seems, a plagiarist.

Related posts
Proust's coffee
All Proust posts (Pinboard)

Donkey Kong

Steve Wiebe is after a world-record score in Donkey Kong, live, now, online.

The wonderful documentary film The King of Kong chronicles the rivalry between Wiebe and Donkey Kong arch-nemesis Billy Mitchell.

Steve Wiebe plays Donkey Kong (via kottke.org)

[Update: He missed.]

Related post
Movie recommendation: The King of Kong

What plagiarism looks like

[Image from What Plagiarism Looks Like.]

Some enterprising readers (faculty? student-journalists?) have gone through the dissertations of Carl Boening and William Meehan, highlighting every passage in Meehan's that can be found, word for word, in Boening's. Neither the University of Alabama (which granted Boening and Meehan their doctorates) nor Jacksonville State University, where Meehan is president, has chosen to take up the obvious questions about plagiarism that Meehan's dissertation presents. As another recent story suggests, plagiarism seems to be governed by a sliding scale, with consequences lessening as the wrongdoer's status rises.

With Meehan's dissertation, things are even worse than the highlighting would suggest: what's yellow is what's word for word. There are further instances of plagiarism in Meehan's work that involve less than word-for-word correspondence.

You can find both dissertations and an index, syncing them page by page, at What Plagiarism Looks Like. That site is the source of the image above.

[The documents are also now at Scribd: Boening dissertation, Meehan dissertation, index.]

[December 5, 2009. A new development: Court stops plagiarism claim against JSU president.]

Related posts
Boening, Meehan, plagiarism
Plagiarism in the academy

Proust's coffee

Marcel Proust's housekeeper Céleste Albaret recounts preparing the boss's coffee:

It was a ritual. First, only Corcellet coffee could be used, and it had to be bought at a shop in rue de Lévis in the seventeenth arrondissement where it was roasted, to make sure it was fresh and had lost none of its aroma. The filter, too, had to be Corcellet. Even the little tray was from Corcellet.

Céleste Albaret, Monsieur Proust, translated by Barbara Bray (New York: New York Review Books, 2003), 22.

The Corcellet family opened une épicerie fine, a fine-foods store, a delicatessen, in Paris in 1787. As late as 1983, there was a Corcellet (Paul) roasting coffee at his Parisian store. Céline de Pierredon-Corcellet, Paul's daughter, now runs SOPROVAL (Société Provençale d'Alimentation de Luxe) in Provence, producing mustards, oils, spices, and vinegars. No coffee alas.

A trip to Google Book Search suggests that Proust was hardly unusual in his devotion to Corcellet coffee:

From Galignani's New Paris Guide, for 1852: Compiled from the Best Authorities, Revised and Verified by Personal Inspection, and Arranged on an Entirely New Plan (Paris: A. and W. Galignani, 1852), 594.

*

June 2: Now there's more on Proust's coffee.

Related reading
Paul Corcollet (1910–1993) (The Independent)
SOPROVAL (company history)
Proust's letters to Céleste Albaret at auction (with coffee stains)
All Proust posts (via Pinboard)

Real housewives fifth-graders

From The Real Housewives of New York City, Kelly Killoren Bensimon speaking:

"Maybe he's an imaginary boyfriend to you, but he's not an imaginary boyfriend to me!"

This show makes better sense if you think of the cast as fifth-graders. "You think you're better than me!" Et cetera.

Benny Goodman's 100th

"Hollywood Hotel, good morning. Benny Goodman? I'm sorry, but he's rehearsing in the Orchid Room and can't be disturbed."



Benjamin David Goodman was born 100 years ago today.

John McDonough, How Benny Goodman Won Over America (NPR)
Robert McHenry, Benny Goodman @ 100 (Britannica Blog)
Tom Vitale, Benny Goodman: Forever The King Of Swing (NPR)

The Benny Goodman Orchestra and Quartet: clips from Hollywood Hotel (dir. Busby Berkeley, 1937): "Sing, Sing, Sing" (Louis Prima) and "I've Got a Heartful of Music" (Richard A. Whiting–Johnny Mercer). With Harry James (trumpet), Teddy Wilson (piano), Lionel Hampton (vibraphone), Gene Krupa (drums) (via Dailymotion).

[Photograph from New York World's Fair records, 1939-1940, via the NYPL Digital Gallery.]

"So cheap, so accessible"

Charles McGrath tries the Kindle:

Books for the Kindle are so cheap and so accessible, turning up on your device within seconds, that you wind up buying them impulsively and almost indiscriminately.

One evening my wife wanted to check a passage from Dombey and Son, which she had been listening to in the car. Ninety-nine cents, a typed-in phrase and, bingo, there it was.

By-the-Book Reader Meets the Kindle (New York Times)

That's great for Amazon. And for Mrs. McGrath, of course. I've used Google Book Search many times to check a sentence or passage. But when a novel becomes almost disposable, something one can buy for one-off use (like a cheap hat or umbrella), I worry that what's happened to music is now happening to books.

The comments on this article are worth reading too.

A related post
No Kindle for me

David Barringer on books

Graphic designer and writer David Barringer, interviewed by Ellen Lupton:

Some people argue that books are becoming more like art objects, released from the pressure to convey a narrative and liberated into the world of wacky dimensionality. Sure, it would be fun to attach half a beach ball on the front cover, the other half on the back cover, and inflate them both for the ultimate beach book. But I've seen many friends who are avid readers turn toward their shelves of books and regard them as they would a photo album of their own lives. We take the contents of books into our imaginations, and our personalities are influenced by them. Looking at the books on my shelves, I feel memories bloom, my own life come back to me. Books are triggers for remembering where we have been, and who we are. A book is like a body part, and when you die and your connection to the book is broken, the book dies a little, too.

A Conversation With David Barringer (Design Observer)

My Dinner with André: Criterion DVD

"I think if you could become fully aware of what existed in the cigar store next door to this restaurant, I think it would just blow your brains out."

At last: My Dinner with André (dir. Louis Malle, 1981) will be released on June 23 in a Criterion Collection edition. I've been waiting for this one for years.