Domestic comedy

[Two voices, in unison, honest.]

“That sounds a little like ‘Moonlight in Vermont.’”

What sounds a little like “Moonlight in Vermont” is the theme music from the earliest episodes of the television series Naked City (dir. Jules Dassin). The complete run of Naked City, 138 episodes, is now available on DVD. Amazon has the 29-disc set for $121.16 (list $179.98). The pre-order price ended up dropping — who knows why? — from $99 to $25.48. Our household is delirious.

The biggest surprise about the early half-hour episodes of the series: the lead characters are those of the film Naked City, Lieutenant Detective Dan Muldoon and Detective Jimmy Halloran, here played by John McIntire (with artifical flavoring — that is, a brogue) and James Franciscus.

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Recently updated

Hi and Lois, repurposed Now with greener spinach, and more of it.

Borges on reading

Jorge Luis Borges, against “lectura obligatoria,” obligatory reading:

Reading should be a form of happiness, so I would advise all possible readers of my last will and testament — which I do not plan to write — I would advise them to read a lot, and not to get intimidated by writers’ reputations, to continue to look for personal happiness, personal enjoyment. It is the only way to read.

From Professor Borges: A Course on English Literature, ed. Martín Arias and Martín Hadis, trans. Katherine Silver (NY: New Directions, 2013).

And the original passage, from the documentary film Borges para millones (dir. Ricardo Wullicher, 1978):

La lectura debe ser una de las formas de la felicidad, de modo que yo aconsejaría a esos posibles lectores de mi testamento — que no pienso escribir — que leyeran mucho, que no se dejaran asustar por la reputación de los autores, que sigan buscando una felicidad personal, un goce personal. Es el único modo de leer.

[Borges para millones is available at the usual place.]

Hi and Lois, repurposed

The more I looked at today’s Hi and Lois, the less I could resist:


[Hi and Lois revised, November 13, 2013.]

After the famous Carl Rose New Yorker cartoon, caption by E. B. White.

November 14: Never satisfied. I’ve replaced the cereal in Ditto’s bowl and made everything greener.

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Hi and Lois watch

[Hi and Lois. November 13, 2013. Click for a larger view.]

If my cereal looked like that, I too would throw it to the floor. My version:


[Hi and Lois corrected. Click for a larger view.]

This isn’t the first time there’s been a problem with food coloring in Hi and Lois. In 2011, the Flagstons were using black ketchup, giving rise to an Orange Crate Art caption challenge.

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Word of the day: smellum

[Henry, November 12, 2013.]

I startled slightly when I saw today’s Henry. This strip is keeping it old-school indeed.

Smellum appears in neither the Oxford English Dictionary nor Webster’s Third. Nor does it appear in the one slang dictionary in my possession (the 1975 edition of the Dictionary of American Slang). I know the word from the Coen brothers’ Depression-era film O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), in which it’s spoken by pomade devotee Ulysses Everett McGill:

“As soon as we get ourselves cleaned up and we get a little smellum in our hair, why, we’re gonna feel a hundred percent better about ourselves and about life in general.”

A source from Google Books has smellum as a bit of pidgin English:


[Charles Godfrey Leland, Pidgin-English Sing-Song; or, Songs and Stories in the China-English Dialect (London: Trübner, 1876). The sample sentence means “Bring me that perfume.”]

That’s the earliest source I can find. And the scholarly databases I’ve checked have no smellum. Which stinks, I know.

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Digital-naïf watch

I think it remarkable that so many so-called digital natives have fallen for the fake news that BIg Bird is transgender. A few seconds with the Google is sufficient to establish that the story is a spoof. Here is the story’s source, if you’d like to see it. Among the headlines at the site: “Analysts Forecast Drop In Holiday Spending As More Families Rely On Presents From Santa Claus.”

As I wrote in a post in which I made up the term “digital naïf,” “Many so-called digital natives are in truth digital naïfs. The natives’ naïveté is considerable.” Take a look at the Twitter if you doubt me.

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Digital-naïf watch

November 11, 1923

[“Wilson Overcome Greeting Pilgrims; Predicts Triumph: ‘I Have Seen Fools Resist Providence and Perish, as Will Come Again,’ He Asserts. Speaks with Difficulty Apparently Suffering Physical Pain, He Is Greatly Affected by Seeing Disabled Soldiers.” The New York Times, November 12, 1923.]

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How to help the Philippines

How you can help Typhoon Haiyan survivors (USA Today).

Prufrock as comics

The opening pages of a comic-book version of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” by Julian Peters.

The only panel that seems off: “There will be time to murder and create” (too literal). Other than that, it’s terrific.

[Found via Boing Boing.]