Outside Llewyn Davis

Elaine and I saw the Coen brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis yesterday. I thought more of it than she did (and still do), but the more we talked about the film, the less I liked it.

The film’s title is unmistakably ironic: Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) remains a cipher. How someone utterly insensate in his relationships can sing and play with such feeling is a question that the film leaves unexplored. Even in his devotion to music, Davis is unfathomable. What he hears in (so-called) folk music, how he found his way to it: we never know. There’s not one conversation about music, not one mention of the rural sources of the songs Davis and fellow urbanites are now making their own. The only character I can recall who speaks of music as music (and not as a business) is Roland Turner (John Goodman), a jazz musician whose monologue touches on the difference between music that uses the chromatic scale and music that uses three chords. He’s a more interesting cipher than Davis.

What Inside Llewyn Davis offers is stuff to look at: well-kempt beards, browline eyeglasses, Gibson guitars, corduroy jackets, and crepe-soled shoes. I had hoped to do more than look at. But being kept on the outside looking at the outside seems a given with the Coens.

[Are we meant to hear Llewyn Davis’s music as something extraordinary? I think so.]

A Henry drawer

[Henry, January 11, 2014.]

The world of Henry is the world without drawer slides. I like the cartooned version of a dovetail joint (no trapezoids), and I like the orderliness of this room: a spotless carpet, a plant on the dresser, blinds and curtains on the window. Don’t all windows have both?

Henry is looking for a pair of binoculars to take to the movie theater. The picture is The Big Race, with horses.

Related reading
All Henry posts (Pinboard)

[There are also no books on the floor in the Henry world. It is a world without 積ん読 [tsundoku].]

Kurt Vonnegut on hometown jerks

Our friend Seymour Barab sent along a book of Kurt Vonnegut’s letters. How about that? Thank you (again), Seymour!

Here is a passage I especially like, from a Vonnegut letter to two old Indianapolis friends, Mary Jane “Majie” and William “Skip” Failey (June 21, 1982):

No — I will not be there for Vonnegut Week. Any American with common sense knows that if he was a jerk in high school he will be a jerk in his own hometown forever.

Letters, ed. Dan Wakefield (New York: Delacorte, 2012).

Other Vonnegut posts
Advice for high-school students
“[B]eautiful and surprising and deep”
E-mail from Stefan Hagemann
Kurt Vonnegut, Manager
Kurt Vonnegut on English studies

[Seymour Barab and Kurt Vonnegut collaborated on Cosmos Cantata (1995).]

Libby Kingston’s advice

From the Naked City episode “Bullets Cost Too Much” (January 4, 1961), a lovely exchange between Libby Kingston (Nancy Malone) and Adam Flint (Paul Burke):

“Whenever you want to know who you are, don’t ask anybody else. Just ask yourself.”

“Except you.”

“Well, of course, except me.”

This episode stands out for sheer density: numerous plot lines and a cast that includes James (credited as Jimmy) Caan, Frank Campanella, Bruce Dern, Betty Field, Paul Hartman, Al Henderson, Barbara Lord, Johnny Seven, Jean Stapleton, and Dick York. The context for this exchange: Adam has been in the papers, slammed as a “bad cop,” then hailed as a hero.

Related reading
All Naked City posts (Pinboard)

Coming soon from Google

[Ugh.]

If the Official Gmail Blog is to be believed, anyone using Google+ will soon be able to use Gmail to send e-mail to any other Google+ user. The sender will not need to know the sendee’s e-mail address. Notice the first choice in the drop-down list above.

I never thought that not-have-to-sign-up-for-Google+ would turn into a life goal. Hotmail looks, in retrospect, not bad at all.

[Though I’m forgetting about the years-ago debacle when Microsoft was silently deleting messages from Hotmail’s Sent folder.]

Recently updated

Grammarly, WhiteSmoke There’s an open-source alternative.

Recently updated

How to be a student a professor will remember (for the right reasons) A reader points out what’s missing from this set of suggestions. Thanks, Steve.

Dr. Scat

[The 4 oz. size. Click for a larger bottle.]

I’ve had this bottle for a long time. I probably bought it at a going-out-of-business office-supply store, long after I stopped using a manual typewriter. I may have been channeling Charlie Brown: “I think it needs me.”

Dr. Scat Typewriter Platen Roll and Type Cleaner is powerful stuff. It is made of ten parts ool-ya-koo, five parts shoo-bitty-oww, and one part zot. Any more zot and the bottle would have exploded by now.

The company that produced this item is no longer known as the Dr. Scat Chemical Company. It’s now the Starkey Chemical Process Company, still in La Grange, Illinois. A page describing the company shows the Dr. Scat name on a brick wall and lists “Dr. Seat” as one of the company’s brands. Oops. Or better make that oopapada.

[This post is the fifteenth in an occasional series, “From the Museum of Supplies.” Supplies is my word, and has become my family’s word, for all manner of stationery items. The museum is imaginary. The supplies are real.]

Other Museum of Supplies exhibits
Dennison’s Gummed Labels No. 27 : Eagle Turquoise display case : Eagle Verithin display case : Faber-Castell Type Cleaner : Fineline erasers : Illinois Central Railroad Pencil : A Mad Men sort of man, sort of : Mongol No. 2 3/8 : Moore Metalhed Tacks : National’s “Fuse-Tex” Skytint : Pedigree Pencil : Real Thin Leads : Rite-Rite Long Leads : Stanley carpenter’s rule

Recently updated

Farewell, 45 West 53rd The American Folk Art Museum will be demolished after all.

Harvey Pekar on record collecting

“At first, and for a long time, it was a healthy thing to do”: Harvey Pekar on record collecting (YouTube). Art by R. Crumb.

Related reading
All Harvey Pekar posts (Pinboard)

[Found via Mosaic Records.]