As seen on TV

“[T]he parts where they show us what we’re doing wrong and why we need the product”: As seen on TV.

(Thanks, Ben!)

Chock full o’Nuts lunch hour

“Lunchtime shoppers and department-store workers jam the Herald Square Chock Full O’ Nuts [sic]. The rush-hour eater waits five minutes, often eats in 10.”

A rough count suggests at least 120 people in this photograph.

[Photograph by Alfred Eisenstaedt, from “The U.S. Goes Out to Lunch,” Life, January 3, 1955. Via the Life photo archive. Don’t miss the large version.]

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Angela Lansbury and Basil Rathbone (Out to lunch)
Chock full o’Nuts
New York, 1964: Chock full o’Nuts

Angela Lansbury and Basil Rathbone

“In the studio commissary on Paramount lot Film Star Angela Lansbury, wearing prop coronet and ermine from her morning stint as the princess in Danny Kaye’s new movie Court Jester, munches plebian hamburger next to Basil Rathbone.”

[Photograph by Alfred Eisenstaedt, from “The U.S. Goes Out to Lunch,” Life, January 3, 1955. Via the Life photo archive.]

A related post
Chock full o’Nuts lunch hour (Another Eisenstaedt photograph)

An iPad per semester

The Washington Post reports that Seton Hill University — the Pennsylvania school that’s giving an iPad to every full-time student — will be adding a $500 per semester fee to cover the cost of increased bandwidth and wireless access. In effect, an iPad per semester. The large print giveth, and the &c.

A related post
“iPads for EVERYONE!”

The government-issue pen

“It’s the Coca-Cola of ink pens,” said Richard Oliver, operations manager at Industries of the Blind in North Carolina. “Everybody recognizes this pen.”

From a Washington Post article on the lowly, mighty government-issue pen. Bonus: specifications.

Update: There’s a great source online.

Home sweet Homer

Bornova mayor Kamil Okyay Sındır: “All findings indicate Homer lived in Bornova.”

Gaziemir mayor Halil İbrahim Şenol: “It is not true that Homer lived in Bornova, and our research will support and reveal the truth.”

Turkish mayors battle to claim Homer:

This is Homer's real home, says mayor (Hurriyet Daily News and Economic Review)

[Post title with apologies to the Odyssey episode of Wishbone.]

Eddie Feibusch

Says Eddie Feibusch, eighty-six-year-old zipper maven, “A button is unpleasant.”

For Eddie Feibusch, a Life in Zippers (New York Times)
ZipperStop (“Unzipping America since 1941”)

Marcel Proust exhibit

In Paris, an exhibit of 160 documents:

Proust, du temps perdu au temps retrouvé (Musée des lettres et manuscrits)

The website is a Flash nightmare. Don’t overlook the PDF.

Henry Darger exhibit

“These are the images to which Darger woke up each morning, returned to every evening after church and work, and retired to at night.”

The Private Collection of Henry Darger (American Folk Art Museum)

Inverabretes, a creative story

A Google search that brought someone to my post “Extra credit?”: extra credit inverabretes creative story. So:

Once upon a time, there were three inverabretes. They were careless spellers, every one. And when they did not do well on their spelling test, they asked their teacher for extra credit. “Plese, plese, plese,” they cried. Their teacher, who had a backbone, suggested that they study harder for the next test. And they did. And they did better.