Missing the obivous

I miss the obvious all the time. See the typo in the title of this post? Obvious, isn’t it?

But on a more serious note: I just realized that I’ve been missing something in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) that now seems ridiculously obvious. I first saw Vertigo in 1984 and have seen it many times since. I’d say that Vertigo is my favorite film. But I think I’ve misunderstood the relationship between John “Scottie” Ferguson (James Stewart) and Midge Wood (Barbara Bel Geddes), which has seemed to me a matter of close friends of many years standing. One line of dialogue makes me now think that I’m wrong: “How’s your love life, Midge?”

If Scottie is in the habit of dropping in on Midge, wouldn’t he know, at least sort of? This question could be a matter of awkward exposition, a way to introduce the subject of Scottie and Midge’s past relationship. But here’s what I think is going on. We know that Scottie and Midge were close in college. As Scottie recalls, they were engaged — for “three whole weeks,” as Midge adds. They later (I now think) drifted apart. The death of the police officer who falls from a rooftop in the film’s opening scene has made the news, along with Scottie, who clung to a gutter, paralyzed by acrophobia, as the man fell. Midge (I now think) has seen this news and gotten in touch, feeling tenderness and pity and hoping to rekindle their relationship. More dialogue from Scottie and Midge’s first scene:

“Aren’t you ever gonna get married?”

“You know there’s only one man in the world for me, Johnny-O.”

This exchange too is not what one would expect between close friends of long standing.

Later in the film, Midge leaves a note under Scottie’s door asking “Where are you?” When Scottie drops in, she explains: “I just thought that if I gave you a drink and fed you some dinner, you’d be so grateful you’d take me to a movie.” Awkward and self-abasing, she’s making a play for him. No soap: Scottie’s already in a movie. It is under the direction of Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore) and stars a woman named Madeleine (Kim Novak).

[“We were engaged once, weren’t we?” Barbara Bel Geddes as Midge Wood.]

Butch Ballard (1918–2011)

“I was asleep, and my wife said, ‘Daddy, you have a call from a Mister Duke Ellington.’ I said, ‘Who?’”

The drummer Butch Ballard has died at the age of ninety-two. He was one of the few musicians to have played with both the Count Basie and Ellington bands. Ballard can be heard to advantage on the Ellington trio recording Piano Reflections (Capitol).

The above quotation is from a 2006 interview with Victor Schermer: Butch Ballard: Legendary Philadelphia Drummer (All About Jazz).

NO SMOKIN

[Photograph by Michael Leddy. Brookline, Massachusetts, May 2011.]

The writing was on the wall, an interior wall of the defunct Pleasant Coin Wash. My last cigarette was on October 8, 1989, which must be what made me think of posting this photograph today, before I’d even remembered the no-smokin(g) anniversary. (Thanks, subconscious.)

A related post
Nineteen years later (a self-interview re: smoking)

Domestic comedy

My son the aphorist:

“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land in the vast emptiness of space.”

Related reading
All domestic comedy posts (via Pinboard)

[Thanks, Ben.]

Offline, real-presence education

From a defense of — what can one call it? — offline, real-presence education:

The goal of bringing students to campus for several years is to immerse them in an environment in which learning is the highest value, something online environments, no matter how interactive, cannot simulate. Real learning is hard; it requires students to trust each other and their teachers. In other words, it depends on relationships.

Johann Neem, Online Higher Education’s Individualist Fallacy (Inside Higher Ed)

I’m reminded of what Jacques Barzun wrote in Teacher in America (1945): “Teaching is not a process; it is a developing emotional situation.”

[Yes, “real-presence education” is my irreverent pun on a theological doctrine. No, I don’t think the teacher is God.]

Proust’s Armchair

One expensive chair:

One of the most iconic and important post-modernist designs, Proust’s Armchair, by Italian designer and architect Alessandro Mendini, is to be sold at Bonhams as part of its Contemporary Two sale on 19 October 2011. Designed in 1978, and executed in 1981, for a performance based exhibition entitled Robot Sentimentale, it has attracted a pre-sale estimate of £20,000–30,000.

A related post
Glenn Gould’s chair

[Thanks, George.]

Bill Cunningham New York

Bill Cunningham, smiling while speaking:

“You see, if you don’t take money, they can’t tell you what to do, kid. That’s the key to the whole thing. Don’t touch money: it’s the worst thing you can do.”

Bill Cunningham New York (dir. Richard Press, 2011) is a documentary about the New York Times fashion photographer Bill Cunningham. I have no interest in fashion, so I’m not sure why I was intent on seeing this film. It’s a wonderful portrait of an ascetic, cheerful, funny, modest, utterly dedicated man who negotiates life on his terms: traveling through Manhattan on a bicycle, eating in cheap restaurants, living in a tiny room in Carnegie Hall with the dozens of file cabinets that hold his work. (The cabinets’ handles hold the hangers that hold his few clothes.) A few minutes late in the film are painful: they hint at complexities that an attentive audience can most likely work out for itself.

The sentences I’ve quoted concern Cunningham’s association with the magazine Details: not wanting to be “owned,” he refused to take money for his work.

Bill Cunnigham New York (the film’s website)
Times Topics: Bill Cunningham (New York Times)

Steve Jobs (1955–2011)

From the Los Angeles Times:

Steven P. Jobs, the charismatic technology pioneer who co-founded Apple Inc. and transformed one industry after another, from computers and smartphones to music and movies, has died. He was 56.

Apple announced the death of Jobs — whose legacy included the Apple II, Macintosh, iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad.

“We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today,” Apple said. “Steve’s brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve.”

Steve Jobs dies; Apple’s co-founder transformed computers and culture (Los Angeles Times)

A good way to remember Steve Jobs: read the prepared text of the commencement address he gave at Stanford University in 2005. The address is made of three stories: about trust, work, and mortality.

Dale Carnegie 2.0

Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People has been updated as How to Win Friends and Influence People in the Digital Age. A ghastly sample sentence:

Today’s biggest enemy of lasting influence is the sector of both personal and corporate musing that concerns itself with the art of creating impressions without consulting the science of need ascertainment.

Dwight Garner, Classic Advice: Please, Leave Well Enough Alone (New York Times)

My sector of personal musing has consulted need ascertainment, and it has been determined that it would be interesting to read the original book. Elaine just found a copy at a library book-sale.

“You've got to find out what's eating them”

Success in a carnival’s mitt camp (fortunetelling booth) requires close-reading skills:

“Sometimes they come for a lark and you can always spot that kind. But more often, even though they’re keeping up a bold front, they are worried deep down. If you’re going to be a mitt reader you’ve got to find out what’s eating them. Take the other day, a girl about thirty-five comes in. I spotted the mark on her finger where she had taken off her wedding ring — often they’ll do that to try and fool you. I could tell she was married, all right — an unmarried woman is looking out, this one was looking in. I figured she had at least two small children — she had that hunted look. Her clothes had been good last year, but this year they’d been made over and she was no seamstress. To me, that meant less money this year than last. She had no servants — I got this from her hands. I spotted her as conservative and unimaginative, from her clothes and hair-do. And timid from the expression of her mouth and eyes. Also some anxiety and self-pity. Anxiety alone might have indicated worry over illness in the family — husband, children or herself. Anger, either on the surface or boiling underneath, would mean another woman. But anxiety and self-pity together work out as a rule to money worries.

“You can see from this how closely you can peg them before they even sit down; but you’ve got to have good eyesight and be pretty quick to observe. After all, I pay fifty a week to the carny management for this spot on the midway and when we hit the fair dates it goes up to a hundred. When you have to get up ‘the nut’ that way every week, you’ll really sharpen up your brains if you have any.”

William Lindsay Gresham, Monster Midway: An Uninhibited Look at the Glittering World of the Carny (New York: Rinehart, 1953).

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“GEEK WANTED IMMEDIATELY”