Ernest Borgnine (1917-2012)

[“Ernest Borgnine, talking on phone, in scenes from the movie Marty.” Photograph by Allan Grant. December 1954. From the Life Photo Archive. Click for a larger view.]

Sad news in the New York Times: Ernest Borgnine has died.

Orange Crate Art is a Borgnine-friendly site. I love Marty. I’ve even watched A Grandpa for Christmas three times — because it stars Ernest Borgnine.

One of my favorite OCA posts imagines life after Marty for Marty Piletti and Clara Snyder, who will never die.

The Cummerbund Response

From a dream:

The Cummerbund Response: a gesture, utterance, or choice of apparel whose degree of formality exceeds what is appropriate to an occasion, typically a result of social uncertainty.

A related post
Skeptiphobia (also from a dream)

[In my dream, the term showed up uncapitalized, but capitals look so good in Jim’s comment that I’ve added them here.]

Domestic comedy

“I think our family is loyal to intellectual questions the way normal families are loyal to a sports team.”

Related reading
All domestic comedy posts (via Pinboard)

[Used with permission.]

“Medium talk”

At a dinner party, Larry David (Larry David) asks Hank (Chris Parnell) a question:

“So how’s your marriage?”

“What the hell? Why — why would you ask me that?”

“I’m trying to elevate small talk to medium talk.”

From “The Hero,” Curb Your Enthusiasm (2011).

Related posts
Deep talk v. small talk
Larry David on the red phone
Larry David’s notebook

[We’re watching the eighth season of CYE on DVD.]

Too Late the Phalarope

Jim Doyle, the best teacher I’ve ever known, recommended Alan Paton’s Too Late the Phalarope (1953) to me more than thirty years ago. I bought the novel in paperback, a long time ago — so long that the price, $3.45, now looks like a highly improbable price for a book. The book sat on one shelf or another until last week, when I thought I should read that.

And now I can recommend Too Late the Phalarope. The novel tells the story of the destruction of Pieter van Vlaanderen, Afrikaner, police lieutenant, footballer, stamp collector, husband and father, a man undone by his desire for a black woman named Stephanie. The narrative works as does ancient Greek tragedy: we know from the beginning that Pieter is doomed. His family falls with him: the house of van Vlaanderen. The novel’s narrator is Pieter’s aunt Sophie van Vlaanderen, disfigured, unmarried, unable to prevent what is to befall her nephew (and thus something like the chorus of Greek tragedy). Here and there, we read excerpts from Pieter’s journal, now in Sophie’s hands. In these pages, Pieter is never able to articulate what it is that he feels for Stephanie: his is a desire that dare not speak its name, or that has no name.

Too Late the Phalarope captures the agony of living with the expectation that one’s secret will be (or has already been) found out. A neighbor’s glance, the tone of an offhand remark: to Pieter, the slightest gesture or word begins to seem dangerously meaningful. He hides his secret in a world divided into irreconcilable categories: black and white, body and soul, damnation and salvation, justice and mercy, love and sex. Presiding over all events is an angry patriarch — Pieter’s nearly humorless, rigid father, who is willing to banish his son and lock the door against his return.

I think I’m a better person for having read Too Late the Phalarope. And now I wonder why its enigmatic title didn’t move me to read it sooner.

[A comment on a previous post places Jim’s first encounter with the novel in spring 1980. And if it doesn’t go without saying: Paton was a committed opponent of apartheid.]

Higgs boson explained (?)

My son Ben passes on a link to a video from PhD Comics, The Higgs Boson Explained. It’s beyond me. But I find a satisfactory explanation of the particle in the work of Luther Dixon and Al Smith:

Higgs boson, can’t you hear me when I call?
Higgs boson, can’t you hear me when I call?
Now you ain’t so big, you just small, that’s all.

The Fourth of July

[“American children of Japanese, German and Italian heritage pledging allegiance to the flag.” Photograph by Dorothea Lange. California, April 20, 1942. From the Life Photo Archive. Click for a larger view.]

Saying no to xenophobia is the American way, or ought to be, always. Happy Fourth of July.

Andy Griffith (1926–2012)

Sad news in the Chicago Tribune:

Actor Andy Griffith, whose portrayal of a small-town sheriff made The Andy Griffith Show one of American television’s most enduring shows, has died at his North Carolina home, television station WITN reported on Tuesday.

Another reason to remember Andy Griffith: his performance as Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes in Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd (1957).

A pipe with a cigar in it

Navigating the parking lot of my local multinational retail corporation, I noticed a man behind the wheel of a station wagon. He was smoking a pipe with a cigar in it. The bowl of his pipe held perhaps three or four inches of cigar.

Men do smoke in this manner. Women too. Card Cow has proof that even roosters enjoy a cigar in a pipe. The why though puzzles me. Can anyone suggest an answer?

[I stopped smoking cigarettes almost twenty-three years ago. But sometimes, still, je veux fumer.]

Proust in the NYT crossword

Marcel Proust makes an anagrammatic appearance in today’s New York Times crossword. The clue for 25-Across: “French writer’s state of drunkenness.” The answer: PROUSTSSTUPOR. The maker of today’s puzzle is ninety-eight-year-old Bernice Gordon, who has been making crosswords for sixty years.

Related reading
All Proust posts (via Pinboard)