Sydney Smith on tea and coffee

[Sydney Smith, Wit and Wisdom of the Rev. Sydney Smith, Being Selections from His Writing and Passages of His Letters and Table-Talk (New York: Redfield, 1858).]

Sydney Smith (1771–1845) was an Anglican cleric and, it would seem, delightful company. He created a rhyming recipe for salad dressing. He argued against slavery and for the education of women. One more point in his favor: in profile he strongly resembles the late Bill Youngren. You’ll have to take my word for it.

Donald J. Sobol (1924–2012)

Donald J. Sobol, the creator of Encyclopedia Brown, has died at the age of eighty-seven.

I caught on to the Encyclopedia Brown books in 2008. They’re wonderful. I’m not sure how I managed not to figure that out earlier.

Here’s a post that reproduces an illustration from the first Brown book, Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective (1963). Notice the orange crate.

Nancy meets Billy Wilder

From Nancy Ritz’s 1945 screen test for The Seven Year Itch (dir. Billy Wilder, 1955). In an orderly universe, the title would read The Seven-Year Itch and Marilyn Monroe would have had no competition for the role of The Girl.

Other Nancy posts
Charlotte russe
The greatest Nancy panel?
Nancy is here
Nancy meets Alfred Hitchcock (Vertigo)
Nancy meets Stanley Kubrick (The Shining)

[Nancy panel by Ernie Bushmiller, February 12, 1945, from Nancy Is Happy: Complete Dailies 1943–1945 (Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2012).]

Spam, glorious spam

Hello, i read your blog occasionally and i own a similar one and i was just wondering if you get a lot of spam remarks? If so how do you prevent it, any plugin or anything you can recommend? I get so much lately it's driving me insane so any assistance is very much appreciated.

Cory Doctorow received a spam comment gone awry, one that contained 100+ generic spam comments (a spam menu, as it were, from which the spammer was to choose). That’s one of the comments above.

Here’s a comment that Doctorow didn’t get, aimed at education-related content. This comment has appeared online at least 395 times (thank you, Google) and has been deleted, no doubt, many more times. Exactly as typed:

I have been a student at one of the High Speed Universities online since August 2009 and it has been an answer to my prayers. Their assessments and papers are NO easy task, so for those who say online schools are "dummed down" are highly mistaken.

Related reading
All spam-themed posts (via Pinboard)

Rule 7 and other rules

I have long been a fan of what is called, simply, Rule 7:

The only rule is work. If you work, it will lead to something. It’s the people who do all of the work all the time who eventually catch on to things.

As I wrote in a still mildly popular 2005 post, I found this rule in Learning by Heart, a book by the artist Corita Kent, where it appears in a list of rules for students and teachers in a college art department. Here’s the full list.

This morning Elaine showed me the same list, attributed to John Cage. Wha?

This 2010 post by Keri Smith and the comments that follow explore the question of attribution. I find Smith’s hypothesis plausible: that the quotation from Cage that forms Rule 10 led somehow to all the rules being identified as his work. If the list of rules is by Cage, I’d say it’s the best thing he ever wrote. But a comment on Smith’s post from the artist Jill Bell quotes correspondence from Richard Crawford that would seem to confirm a collaborative effort by Kent and her students. Crawford was one of Kent’s students.

[Thanks to Daughter Number Three for letting me know who Jill Bell is.]

Maria Cole (1922–2012)

Maria Cole, widow of Nat King Cole, has died at the age of eighty-nine. In the 1940s, as Marie Ellington, she sang with the Duke Ellington Orchestra.

Of course, I was very lucky to have three such singers as Kay Davis, Joya Sherrill, and Marie Ellington all at one time, but there is a sad corollary to be detailed: all three were pretty, all three married, and all three left me.

Duke Ellington, Music Is My Mistress (New York: Doubleday, 1973).

Here is a recording of “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)” with all three singers. Sherrill died in 2010; Davis, earlier this year. The singer Herb Jeffries may now be the last link to the 1940s Ellington orchestra.

Woody Guthrie centennial

[“Folk singer Woody Guthrie playing guitar w. sign on it reading THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS.” Photograph by Eric Schaal. New York, New York, 1943. From the Life Photo Archive. Click for a larger view.]

Woody Guthrie was born in Okemah, Oklahoma, one hundred years ago today. His songs were made for you and me.

Taco Bell’s Canon

Halfhazard work, Ivory League school : just-retired professor James Courter writes about the spelling habits of some of his students, the ones who would appear to do little reading: Teaching “Taco Bell’s Canon” (Wall Street Journal ).

Some of the more startling errors I’ve seen of late: and for an (from several writers), beast for best , retail for retell , scarface for sacrifice . The final item in this series might be the result of the Cupertino effect.

Related posts
No job too small
On “On the New Literacy”

(Thanks, Van Dyke.)

Norman Sas (1925–2012)

The New York Times reports that Norman Sas, the inventor of electric football, has died at the age of eighty-seven. I like this comment from Mr. Sas’s wife Irene: “It wasn’t just something you turned on and it vibrated. It was something you did with your little men.”

I remember spending a small part of my early adolescence attempting to play electric football. It was a total waste of time, not even exasperating enough to be funny. This thirteen-second clip from The Simpsons gives an accurate picture of the “game.”

[That last set of quotation marks are for what Garner’s Modern American Usage calls “so-called-but-not-really.”]

Molly Dodd, Molly Dodd, Molly Dodd

“Are you ever gonna learn how to land this machine?”

“Oh, don’t transfer your anger — it’s immature. Just bend your knees.”

At YouTube, all five seasons of The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd (1987–1991), starring Blair Brown as a beautiful soul lost in New York. Elaine and I share a great affection for this television show, which captures like no other the lonely pathos and sudden surrealism of life in the city. The uploader, who seems to be in a position to know, writes that “the corporate stars and legal planets have aligned to keep Miss Dodd out of the digital age.” Perhaps someday that will change: we have been waiting for years for the series to appear on DVD. The YouTube transfers are from videotape, tracking problems and all. I’m not complaining, only stating a fact. I’m grateful as all get-out for the chance to see this show once more.

Above, Miss Dodd and Davey McQuinn (James Greene) discuss elevator operation. Davey has just offered a frank appraisal of Miss Dodd’s latest poetic effort, which she has described as “part one of a trilogy, tentatively entitled ‘Empty Rooms.’”

I adore Miss Dodd, though she is a lousy, lousy poet.

*

November 2016: The show is long gone from YouTube.

[Note to Slywy: this series affords many opportunities to see a mail chute.]