Father’s Day

[Photograph by Louise Leddy. July 21, 1957.]

The T-shirt was once a standard piece of outerwear for men, always blazing white, always tucked in, equally at home at a cookout, on a handball court, in a park.

James Leddy, my dad, is closing in on eighty-five. I still see this same smile in his face. Happy Father’s Day to him, and to all fathers.

Bloomsday and Father’s Day (2)

[From the “Circe” episode of James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922).]

The scene: Bella Cohen’s brothel. Drunk, abandoned by his friends, Stephen Dedalus has insulted the king, and an English soldier has punched him in the face. Leopold Bloom, who knows Stephen's father Simon, has been following Stephen at a distance and comes to his aid. As Bloom assumes a fatherly role, he sees an apparition of his son Rudolph (Rudy), who died in infancy eleven years ago. Bloom : Stephen :: Odysseus : Telemachus. Father and son. This is one of my favorite passages in Ulysses.

Stephen is murmuring bits of William Butler Yeats’s poem “Who Goes with Fergus?” Bloom’s misunderstanding — “Ferguson, I think I caught. A girl. Some girl.” — is charming and quintessentially Bloomian.

Previous Bloomsday posts
2007 (S, M, P )
2008 (“Love’s Old Sweet Song”)
2009 (Marilyn Monroe reading Ulysses)
2010 (“Bloom, waterlover”)
2011 (“the creature cocoa”)
2012 (Plumtree’s Potted Meat)

Bloomsday and Father’s Day (1)

[From the “Calypso” episode of James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922).]

“There is a young student comes here some evenings named Bannon his cousins or something are big swells”: dig the run-on sentence. Milly Bloom is her mother Molly’s daughter. But it’s her father Leopold who gets a letter. Molly : Poldy :: Milly : Papli.

The song “Seaside Girls” runs through Ulysses. The song’s writer: Harry B. Norris, not Molly’s “suitor” Blazes Boylan or any other Boylan.

Previous Bloomsday posts
2007 (S, M, P )
2008 (“Love’s Old Sweet Song”)
2009 (Marilyn Monroe reading Ulysses)
2010 (“Bloom, waterlover”)
2011 (“the creature cocoa”)
2012 (Plumtree’s Potted Meat)

A last-minute Father’s Day gift idea

It occurs to me to offer a suggestion: the Tweezerman Nail Clipper Set (about $9). Here’s a review. I’ve had a Tweezerman set for several weeks now, and I always look forward to using it, even if trimming one’s nails is a reminder of mortality.

Nicholson Baker has a wonderful essay about the nail clipper and its appeal to us men, “Clip Art.” Any dad would be thrilled to get a Tweezerman set tomorrow.

[About nails and mortality: I learned that in college.]

Upscale student housing

A New York Times article on upscale off-campus student housing in Columbia, Missouri, quotes a University of Missouri sophomore — I’ll call him Brenden — contemplating life at Columbia’s Grove apartment complex:

“It’s like a vacation, almost,” he said. “I’m not going to go to class — that’s how I look at it.”

Brenden, your parents just called. You’re staying in the dorms.

Frog-rock-thing

[“Taken for Granite,” Zippy, June 15, 2013.]

The Oracle at Dingburg.

There appear to be any number of frog-rocks available for consultation. Here’s a page for one in Connecticut. Bill Griffith, Zippy’s creator, lives there. (In Connecticut, not at the rock.)

I would like to ask the frog-rock-thing why I am consistently typing forg for frog.

Related reading
All Zippy posts (Pinboard)

Juvenile delinquents

[Click for larger, more menacing views.]

As a kid in Brooklyn, I believed, as did my peers, that there was something called a “J. D. card,” certifying you as a juvenile delinquent. You were supposed to carry the card with you — in an I. D. wallet, no doubt. It was rumored that a cigarette-smoking teenager on the block carried a J. D. card. Was there ever such a thing? I’m still not sure.

These lineups appear in the Route 66 episode “. . . And the Cat Jumped Over the Moon ” (December 15, 1961). The second delinquent from the left in the second photograph made his screen debut in this episode. He was the mystery guest in yesterday’s Route 66 post.

Related reading
All Route 66 posts (Pinboard)

[Does anyone else remember plastic I. D. wallets?]

“Happy Birthday” copyright fight

The New York Times reports that Jennifer Nelson, at work on a documentary about “Happy Birthday to You,” is seeking to have the song placed in the public domain. One of Nelson’s lawyers estimates that “Happy Birthday to You” brings its owner Warner/Chappell $2 million a year.

The Apostrophe Vigilante

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that people who use apostrophes incorrectly is just taking the proverbial biscuit.

The Apostrophe Vigilante had better watch out for the Subject-Verb Agreement Vigilante.

The plucky punctuators fighting against apostrophe catastrophes (The Independent)

[Vigilantes are tiresome.]

*

July 10, 2013: A comment on this post points out that the Twitter account @apostrophelaw is unrelated to the source of the above quotation. The Independent appears to have conflated the various vigilantes.

Jack Byrd’s idea

This American Life has updated its 2011 story on patent trolls, “When Patents Attack!” The humble apostrophe plays a part in events recounted in the update, proving to be the crucial bit of evidence in a court case over patent rights. The question: does the apostrophe in the words Jack Byrd’s idea mean that the idea was Jack Byrd’s? (I know: well, duh.) The man who wrote those words and received a patent for the idea, Chris Crawford, explains:

“As I’ve written documents over the years, there are times when I use an apostrophe-s, and it seems like I’m supposed to use an apostrophe-s. But I have to say that my grammar is not strong enough to tell you right now with clarity when an apostrophe-s is used.”

What’s at stake goes far beyond Jack Byrd and Chris Crawford.

“When Patents Attack!” (TAL, July 22, 2011)
“When Patents Attack . . . Part Two!” (TAL, May 31, 2013)

[I am usually on a two-week delay in getting to episodes of This American Life.]