Stepping away from the phone

Barbara L. Fredrickson argues for greater face-to-face communication: “Friends don’t let friends lose their capacity for humanity.”

[A sad and common sight: fifteen or twenty students waiting to enter a college classroom, no one talking, each student looking down at a screen.]

Paul Williams (1948–2013)

The music critic Paul Williams has died. He founded Crawdaddy!, the first magazine of rock music criticism, and wrote frequently about the music of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys. A sample, about “Fun, Fun, Fun”:

Notice that the rebellious, fun-loving, fast-driving hero of the song is female. Notice that in every verse, every line except the last ends in “now,” and it works! (One of the jobs of poetry is to capture not the actual words but the subjective impact of everyday speech.) Notice the understated, very specific, rhythmic sound of the words “fun, fun, fun” in the chorus, and the contrasting open-endedness of “away.” Notice the easy, natural, wildly complex interplay between the voices and combinations of voices. Notice the neat double meaning in the second verse, “A lot of guys try to catch her,” referring both to her elusive sexuality (“you look like an ace now”) and her automotive ability (“you drive like an ace now”). Notice how Dad’s futile attempt at discipline only serves to throw her (potentially) into “my” realm and bigger and better trouble. And I know you can't fail to notice one of the sweetest fade-outs ever, the brilliant ordinariness of the song totally transcended in two brief moments of soaring falsetto. Fun, indeed.

Paul Williams, from Brian Wilson & The Beach Boys: How Deep Is the Ocean?: Essays and Conversations (1997).

Related reading
Paul Williams website
Crawdaddy! archive (Wolfgang’s Vault)
Billboard obituary
Los Angeles Times obituary

Browser notepad

From Jose Jesus Perez Aguinaga, a one-line browser notepad. Type this text into your browser’s address bar to create a temporary notepad:



The comments appended to Perez Aguinaga’s post offer many variations on this theme. My favorite: this one by Vladimir Carrer. That I might never use the browser notepad does nothing to diminish its way-coolness.

[Me, I like nvALT, Simplenote, TextWrangler, and WriteRoom.]

Paper and pencil and the SAT

USA Today reports that of 396 students surveyed, nine of ten would prefer taking the SAT with paper and pencil. I am dodging the article’s headline, which includes the tired phrasal adjective t–ch-s–vv–.

Hands[-]Free Hair Rejuvenator

At Hammacher Schlemmer: The Hands[-]Free Hair Rejuvenator ($699.95). Too late for Ricky Ricardo (Desi Arnaz), seen here using a device that bears no resemblance to Hammacher Schlemmer’s product.

[The I Love Lucy episode “Ricky Thinks He’s Going Bald” first aired June 2, 1952. Image found here.]

The bookish expelled

“They dwell on passages. They ask difficult questions. They might even stare out a window for a while and think about what they have read. What’s more, they don’t always follow instructions, and their notebooks aren’t even remotely neat. We can’t afford that kind of student in today’s economy”: College Expels Bookish Students.

A related post
George Steiner on “the end of bookishness”

Orange newspaper art

[Click for a larger, oranger view.]

Gunther at Lexikaliker alerted me to this unusual poster: an advertisement in the form of a newspaper front-page made of Mandarin oranges. It’s the newspaper that’s being advertised, not the fruit. Background here; image here. I would love to have this image in poster form.

Does anyone out there read Mandarin orange?

Other posts with orange
Crate art, orange : Orange art, no crate : Orange crate art : Orange crate art (Encyclopedia Brown) : Orange flag art : Orange manual art : Orange mug art : Orange notebook art : Orange notecard art : Orange peel art : Orange pencil art : Orange soda art : Orange stem art : Orange telephone art : Orange timer art : Orange toothbrush art : Orange train art : Orange tree art : Orange Tweed art

[Thanks, Gunther.]

Nabokov distinctions

Useful (sort of) and funny distinctions from Vladimir Nabokov, as found in Edward Jay Epstein’s wonderful account of serving as Nabokov’s “auxiliary course assistant”: “the near near,” “the near far,” “the far near,” and “the far far.” For Nabokov, they marked Ithaca’s four movie theaters.

I’ve already incorporated these distinctions (with proper attribution) in my (ahem) pedagogy. The reading for Wednesday: that’s for the near near future. The short essay due April 10: that’s for the near far future. Final examinations still feel like the far far future, though that future is more likely far near.

Related reading
All Nabokov posts (Pinboard)

Positively Naked City

One of the strangest and best episodes of Naked City I’ve seen: “Hold for Gloria Christmas” (first aired September 19, 1962), an unusually respectful look at Beat culture, as found in New York’s Greenwich Village. The episode tells the story of Duncan Kleist (Burgess Meredith), an alcoholic poet determined to recover the manuscripts he’s traded to bar owner Stanley Dorkner (Herschel Bernardi). Kleist (who shares a last name with a German poet) seems a cross between Jack Kerouac and Dylan Thomas — disheveled, sweaty, tossing off what seem to be spontaneous bits of eloquence. Dorkner kills Kleist in the opening minutes of the episode; as the detectives investigate, flashbacks give us the events that precede the opening scene.

The opening gives us a quick tour of West Fourth Street locations. Click on any image for a larger view.


[Duncan Kleist, running with an envelope full of manuscripts.]

The Music Inn still stands at 169 West Fourth. It’s now an instrument store. Here’s a short video about the store’s history.



Bill Tendler? A jeweler (1906–1973). Here are some samples of his work. The Village Voice ad to the left appeared on December 7, 1955. I don’t know who occupied no. 169 when.


[Kleist stops to talk to a blind newsvendor.]

At 171 West Fourth, Allan Block Sandals. Here is a brief chronology of Block’s life. As the musicologist Elijah Wald has noted, Block’s shop was “the unofficial headquarters of the old-time string band revival.” Block’s daughter, the musician Rory Block, has written about her family’s life on Fourth Street. And Allan, who left New York for New Hampshire, may be found fiddling on YouTube.


[From David Hajdu’s Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina and Richard Fariña (2001).]



Bianchi & Margherita, at 186 West Fourth, was an Italian restaurant with music. From a 1959 description:

Along with your Italian pasta you get operatic selections hurled at you from every direction in an almost continuous performance. Everybody sings — waiter, bartender, hatcheck girl, even the chef, who winds up the show by leading the singing ensemble in a rousing performance of the Anvil Chorus from Il Trovatore.

Can you imagine?

And last, the Koltnow Gallery at 192 West Fourth. Like everything here but the Music Inn, it’s gone. Even the corner mailbox is gone. But if you’re curious enough to go to Google Maps, you can still see those pie-wedge slabs of sidewalk, same as they ever were.


[Street corner with dead poet.]


[From John Minahan, The Music of Time: An Autobiography (2001).]


[Village Voice, May 14, 1958.]

But wait: there’s more. Alan Alda is in this episode, making his third appearance on television. No name: he is Young Poet in the Cafe Espresso.



The closing credits note that the “Cafe Espresso” scenes were filmed in Cafe Manzani. It was in fact Cafe Manzini, on Bleecker Street. From the St. Petersburg (Florida) Evening Independent (January 18, 1962): “If you like plays of the avant garde variety, you will like the Manzini’s offerings. If not, well . . . .” Kleist and Young Poet engage in poetic battle, and Young Poet wins when he begins to recite alongside Kleist, whose seemingly improvised offering turns out to be a 1936 Kenneth Fearing poem.


[Dig the musicians digging the poets.]

And one more surprise:



I would recognize her anywhere. It’s Candace Hilligoss, making her first screen appearance as “Mrs. Harris.” Mr. and Mrs. Harris were unmistakably modeled on Alexander and Margie King (later known as Margie King Barab, a dear friend). Hilligoss would appear as Mary Henry in Carnival of Souls (dir. Herk Harvey), which came out seven days after this episode aired.


[Pre-ZIP.]

Mailing early in the day, in the zone-world or the ZIP-world, is the better way. But you’ll have to watch the episode to understand the full significance of this final image.

Orange Crate Art is a Naked City-friendly zone.

Other Naked City posts
GRamercy 7–9166 : GRamercy again : MUrray Hill 7-3933 : Naked Bronx : Nearly plotzing : “Old Rabbit Ears” : Poetry and Naked City : TW8-4044 : “WE DELIVER”

[For Duncan Kleist and Jack Kerouac, consider, for example, these two photographs, by Fred McDarrah and Allen Ginsberg. And if the post’s title baffles: read and listen.]

Staplers of the Times

“Staplers are still such a fact of everyday life that we’ve lost sight of what a triumph of manufacturing they are. They can bend metal — no batteries or electricity required”: The Attachment That Still Makes Noise (New York Times).

Found via Submitted for Your Perusal, whose Sunday Times posts always point to something I’ve overlooked.

Related posts
Staple! (for students) : Swingline “Tot 50” : “Tot 50” joke contest : Woody Allen’s staplers