Digital natives and typewriters

The New York Times reports on a “growing trend” among digital natives:

They’re fetishizing old Underwoods, Smith Coronas and Remingtons, recognizing them as well designed, functional and beautiful machines, swapping them and showing them off to friends. At a series of events called “type-ins,” they’ve been gathering in bars and bookstores to flaunt a sort of post-digital style and gravitas, tapping out letters to send via snail mail and competing to see who can bang away the fastest.

Gravitas? Whatever. I think it’s terrific that digital natives are recognizing the beauty of manual-typewriter design. But as someone who remembers Eaton’s Corrasable Bond, the tedium of centering titles, the far greater tedium of retyping whole pages after dropping a line in transcription, and the sheer racket, I feel no nostalgia for the typewriter as an object of use.

Related viewing
In Praise of the Typewriter (Life, via Boing Boing)

[No, you can’t have my Olympia.]

The earliest writing in Europe

“Archaeologists have found a clay tablet bearing the earliest known writing in Europe, a 3,350-year-old specimen, which makes it at least 150 years older than other known tablets from the region”: Ancient tablet bears writing, to scientists’ surprise (Los Angeles Times).

Rollins, Salinger, Taylor

Sonny Rollins, a reluctant on-camera interviewee: “I don’t want to do any more interviews. I want to be the J.D. Salinger of jazz.” And: “What am I, Robert Taylor?”

[Photograph of Robert Taylor by Rex Hardy Jr., 1936. From the Life Photo Archive.]

Related viewing
Jazz Video Guy speaks with Sonny Rollins (JazzTimes)

Headlines quiz

Can you tell which ones are real news?

“International Mystery Man Arrested, Has Past Revealed”

“Meat Industry Introduces New Easy-Tear Perforated Beef”

“New Facebook Feature Forces Users To Be Like Everyone Else”

“Octomom Unites With PETA For Spay-Neuter Campaign”

“Pizza Delivery Guy Fights Gun-Wielding Thugs, Still Makes Delivery”

Answers in the comments.

Van Dyke Parks meets Lillian Gish

Van Dyke Parks was a child actor. Here, from an interview, is a story about those days:

One time, I was in a show with Teresa Wright, I forget the name of the show, but I do remember that there was a bit actress, a small role — and my mother cautioned me (my mother went into New York with me — my parents were reluctant to see me in this business, but it helped me pay my tuition at the Boychoir school) — there was one actress and her name was Lillian Gish. And my mother said, she cautioned me, “Van Dyke, that woman over there was once *the* biggest star in the world. She was D.W. Griffith’s Sweetheart Actress. She’s been to the top, so you treat her with great respect.”

So, I’m sitting there, and neither Lillian Gish nor I were the center of attention — we were just sitting there waiting for the important people to do what they did. So I turned to her and said, “Miss Gish?” and she said, “Yes?” And I said, “My mother said you were a great actress in the silents.” And she said, “Oh, that’s true. Yes, indeed it was true.” So I asked, “Weren’t you scared when you heard that the talkies were coming?“ And Lillian Gish, without missing a beat, said, “No, in fact — we didn't call them ‘the talkies’ when we heard that film was going to have sound. We just knew it would have sound, and we all somehow imagined that the sound would be entirely music.”

Now, that’s a phenomenon — how people would imagine that sound would come to film.

I thought of this story after watching The Night of the Hunter (dir. Charles Laughton, 1955). The film is available, beautifully restored and with many extras, from the Criterion Collection.

[Lillian Gish as Rachel Cooper, protector of children, in The Night of the Hunter.]

A related post
Van Dyke Parks in The Honeymooners

ALJARDINE

An error, at least sort of, in today’s clever New York Times crossword. The clue for 30-Down reads “Giants hurler (2010 champs) / Beach Boys vocalist on ‘Help Me, Rhonda’ (#1 in 1965).” The answer of course is BRIANWILSON. Brian did sing backup on “Help Me, Rhonda.” Singing lead though was Al Jardine. For a #1 hit with Brian singing lead (at least on the choruses), there’s “I Get Around,” the Beach Boys’ first #1 (1964).

A related post
PEREC, not ADAIR

Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day

This tip (yesterday’s) is curiously timed. My son Ben and I were shopping on Saturday for a Middle Eastern feast — falafel, Persian salad, and tabbouleh. I asked Ben to get a couple of cucumbers, and he asked how many. I said two, a couple. Ben pointed out that couple might mean “a few,” “several,” not necessarily two. I offered what I thought was a case-closing example: “When you say ‘They’re a nice-looking couple,’ how many people do you mean?”

But here comes Bryan Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day, one of two thus far for couple:

As a noun, ‘couple’ has traditionally denoted a pair. (As a verb, it always denotes the joining of two things.) But in some uses, the precise number is vague. Essentially, it’s equivalent to “a few” or “several.” In informal contexts this usage is quite common and unexceptionable — e.g.:

“Those most anxious should practice at least once in front of a couple of people to be comfortable with an audience.” Molly Williamson, “Unlocking the Power of Public Speaking,” Milwaukee J. Sentinel, 15 Sept. 2002, at L12.

“This slick, cozy shop, which underwent a makeover a couple of years back, is a hybrid of takeout and restaurant.” A.C. Stevens, “Why Cook Tonight?” Boston Herald, 15 Sept. 2002, Food §, at 65.

So Ben has Bryan Garner in his corner. It’s several against one!

And then there’s a couple three, which I call an “Illinoism.”

Bryan Garner, author of Garner’s Modern American Usage (Oxford University Press, 2009), offers a free Usage Tip of the Day. You can sign up at LawProse.org. Orange Crate Art is a Garner-friendly site (though I prefer to type out numbers up to ninety-nine).

Related posts
All Bryan Garner posts
Need worked (An Illinoism)

Farley Granger (1925–2011)

From the Los Angeles Times:

Farley Granger, a handsome young leading man during Hollywood's post-World War II era who was best known for his starring roles in the Alfred Hitchcock suspense thrillers Strangers on a Train and Rope has died. . . .

Looking back on his career in a 2007 interview with the Star-Ledger of New Jersey, Granger said: “It was just luck. And stubbornness. I wasn’t going to listen to anyone saying you can’t do this, you can’t do that. I didn’t care about that. I was just going to go my own way. I was just determined to live my own life.”

Farley Granger was also terrific in the relatively unknown film Side Street. I think I might have first heard of him in Tom Waits’s song “Burma Shave”: “He kinda looked like Farley Granger, with his hair slicked back.”

Write five sentences on my house

Ever since I wrote a post on a few sentences from Charles Dickens’s Bleak House, Google searches for five sentences (that is, for ready-made homework) have been ending up at Orange Crate Art. Write five sentences on my house is the latest such search.

Kid, if you write even one sentence on my house, I’m gonna call the cops.

Other “five sentences” posts
Bleak House : The cat : Clothes : The driver : Life : Life on the moon : The past (1) : The past (2) : The rabbit : The ship : Smoking : The telephone

“Fanciful ideas rampant”

In 1911, the Coca-Cola Company tested the effects of caffeine on sixteen users and non-users. The test-subjects kept notes:

On Feb. 22, a regular user was caffeine-free: “Felt like a ‘bone head’ all day. My head was dull more than usual.” On Feb. 25, an abstainer was dosed with four grains of caffeine (260 milligrams, the approximate equivalent of a 12-ounce cup of Starbucks coffee): “Gradual rise of spirits till 4:00. Then a period of exuberance, of good feeling. Fanciful ideas rampant.”

They’re rampant here too, though I’ve been nearly caffeine-free for nearly a year — nothing more than a very occasional cup of caf tea and a very, very occasional cup of caf coffee (helpful before watching films with subtitles).

A Century Later, Jury’s Still Out on Caffeine Limits (New York Times)