Beatlemania, flagged

I was typing up a page for a class:



Change Beatlemania? Never.

Find Next? Not happening.

Ignore? Impossible. The screaming!

The Oxford English Dictionary takes care of a definition: “addiction to the Beatles and their characteristics; the frenzied behaviour of their admirers.” Again: the screaming!

Related reading
All Beatles posts (Pinboard)

[I was typing the first paragraph of Colin Fleming’s “1963: The Year the Beatles Found Their Voice” (The Atlantic, June 2013), useful for showing how a writer might create a genuine thesis statement for an essay. But 1963? I can’t agree.]

September 11

[Thornton Dial, Looking Out the Windows. 2002. Metal grating, fabric, plastic toys, stuffed animals, rope carpet, wire fencing, carpet scraps, metal, corrugated metal, metal screening, wire, nails, paint cans, Splash Zone compound, enamel, and spray paint on carpet on wood. 100 x 50 x 13 in. Collection of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation.]

In 2011, I posted another Thornton Dial work made in response to the events of September 11, 2001: Interrupting the Morning News.

[Image here. Description here.]

Gum machines, comics, Kubrick, chins

[Henry, September 10, 2013.]

Streetside gum machines live on in the panels of Henry. Every day, this strip offers pictures of the gone world.

And here is a gum machine in a New York City subway station, photographed by Stanley Kubrick for Look. Thanks, Ezra, for passing it on.

Also:

To: Henry

From: Michael

Re: Chin

When you grow up, grow a beard.

More gum machines
Henry : Henry : Henry : Perry Mason : Henry

Rachel Toor’s writing tricks

“It’s taken me a long time to feel secure enough to admit to such simple and obvious practices”: Rachel Toor explains what’s in her little bag of writing tricks. The Find command and ugly fonts: especially useful tricks.

A related post
The F word

Pencildom!

At Contrapuntalism, Sean announces an astonishing discovery: there really is a Pencildom.

Marxism for the young

Readers under, oh, say, thirty: Do you know who the Marx Brothers are? Have you ever seen a Marx Brothers movie?

If you think that these questions are insulting, please believe that I have good reason to ask. So please, leave a reply in the comments. Thanks.

A small bit of good news

From The New York Times:

Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday that if President Bashar al-Assad wants to avert an attack on Syria he should hand over all of his chemical weapons within one week. Russia, the Syrian government’s most important backer, quickly welcomed the idea.

The United States has had ample experience of what can happen when limited military engagements, premised on “high confidence,” begin to play out. The choice, to my mind, is not between doing nothing and bombing; the choice is between bombing and seeking alternatives to bombing.

Space cadet

[Messrs. Kramden (Jackie Gleason) and Norton (Art Carney).]

I noticed a fascinating bit of language use in “TV or Not TV,” an episode of The Honeymooners that aired on October 1, 1955. Ralph and Norton have chipped in to buy a television. They disagree of course about what to watch. It’s been nothing but “space shows, westerns, cartoon frolics, and puppet shows,” Ralph says. Indeed, Norton has just been watching Captain Video and His Video Rangers. And Ralph wants to watch a movie. But Norton keeps changing the channel. And Ralph, in exasperation: “Look. Look, you . . . space cadet.”

The Oxford English Dictionary dates space cadet (“a trainee spaceman or spacewoman”) to 1948 and dates other meanings of the term (“a person regarded as out of touch with reality, esp. (as if) as a result of taking drugs; a person prone to flights of fancy or irrational or strange behaviour”) to 1973. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate dates such meanings (“a flaky, lightheaded, or forgetful person”) to 1979. But here from 1955 is a use of space cadet that seems to convey such meanings perfectly. As Ralph points out again and again, Norton is a maniac, a nut. From “Something Fishy” (December 17, 1955): “The only thing out of order here is your head.”

But then again it may be my head that’s out of order, and that I’m hearing more in Ralph’s words than they could have meant in 1955. What complicates matters is another 1950s television series, Tom Corbett, Space Cadet. In 1955, calling Norton a space cadet may have been no worse than calling him a Junior G-Man or a Mouseketeer. The insult might speak only to Norton’s delight in children’s fare, not to a lack of contact with reality.

Elaine wondered if this episode of The Honeymooners, playing through the years in reruns, might have kept space cadet alive as an insult and played a part in the term’s later meanings.

And now we blast off for Pluto and the moon.

Related reading
All Honeymooners posts (Pinboard)

[The trick by which Ralph gets the television in his apartment is always worth a try: “Head I win, tails you lose.”]

A very special guest (TNYT)

Had I looked at my stats more carefully, I would have realized that something was up: The New York Times has an obituary today for typewriter repairman Manson H. Whitlock.

I am amused that someone from our newspaper of record should be stopping by here in the course of work. O seasoned, trained gatekeeper, if I knew you were comin’ I’d’ve baked a cake.

If the cake puzzles you, here’s the explanation.

No pioneer!

The New York Times crossword puzzle appears in syndication five weeks after publication in the Times. My blog stats today suggest that August 3’s 46-Down baffled many solvers. The clue: “Cool jazz pioneer.” The answer: TORME.

Mel Tormé was many things — a singer, a songwriter, a drummer, a pianist, an actor, a writer — but he was not a cool jazz pioneer. My August 3 post, popular today, suggests how the puzzle may have come to include this far-fetched characterization.

[Post title with apologies to Willa Cather and Walt Whitman.]