A joke in the traditional manner

Why did Oliver Hardy attempt a solo career in movies?

No spoilers. The answer is in the comments.

Related jokes
Santa Claus : Samuel Clemens : Hardy Mums : Bela Lugosi

[“In the traditional manner” means à la my dad.]

Ph.D. debt

“A new crowdsourcing project provides an eye-opening glimpse into the hefty amounts of debt some graduate students take on to pay for their education and how hopeless many of them feel about their prospects for repaying it”: The Cost of a Ph.D. (The Chronicle of Higher Education). The project, in the form of a Google spreadsheet, is here: Ph.D. Debt Survey. It’s a sorrowful thing to read.

Something I said in a post last October: “Borrowing any amount of money to finance graduate work in the humanities is folly.” William Pannapacker’s advice about graduate work in the humanities is simpler: “Just don’t go” — unless you are well-heeled or well-connected or supported by a partner or are earning a credential and your employer is paying. Hard times here and everywhere you go. Times is harder than ever been before.

Winter, ookyook

Winter is ukiuq, or ookyook. Remember ookyook?

“One could have Timofey televised”

[Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin (1957).]

Nabokov seems to have imagined — if only as a horrible pipedream — the end of the classroom and the rise of something MOOC-like. Phonograph records and televisions for all!

Related reading
All Nabokov posts (Pinboard)

Party?

The January/February Atlantic asks a question: “What party would you most like to have attended?”

I am not a party person. But I would like to have attended the party given by Timofey Pnin in Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Pnin (1957). Partly to see Pnin (a mensch among men), partly to sample Pnin’s Punch (“a heady mixture of chilled Chateau Yquem, grapefruit juice, and maraschino”), partly to hear the dowdy conversation (“This beverage is certainly delicious”), partly to take in Nabokov’s satiric picture of life in a New England college town. I would volunteer to stay late and help Pnin with the dishes.

At the risk of repeating The Atlantic and myself: What party would you most like to have attended?

[Sad: The Atlantic asked this question of its readers on December 22 and has had one response. So I think it’s fine to ask the question here.]

Word of the day: chinoiserie

Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day is chinoiserie:

chinoiserie \sheen-wah-zuh-REE\ noun
: a style in art (as in decoration) reflecting Chinese qualities or motifs; also : an object or decoration in this style

This word always makes me think of Duke Ellington: the Ellington-Strayhorn adaptation of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker turns the “Chinese Dance” into “Chinoiserie.” And The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse (1971) begins with Ellington’s own “Chinoiserie,” a feature for the tenor saxophonist Harold Ashby. Here is the studio recording and, even better, a performance from a 1973 concert. That concert, released as Rugged Jungle (Lost Secret, 2003) is ample evidence that even in its last days, the Ellington band could be a force of nature.

Domestic comedy

“Let’s get Kleenex. It’s a name I’ve grown to trust.”

Cf. Einbinder Flypaper.

Related reading
All domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

PIPING HOT COFFEE

[“Coin operating coffee machine with 4 possible mixtures, each selling for five cents.” Photograph by Wallace Kirkland. February 1947. From the Life Photo Archive. Click for a larger view.]

Why piping hot? “Because of the whistling sound made by very hot liquid or food,” says the Oxford English Dictionary. Its first citation is Chaucer’s “Miller’s Tale” (c. 1390):

He sente hir pyment meeth and spiced ale
And wafres pipyng hoot out of the glede.

In other words:

He sent her honeyed wine, mead, and spiced ale,
And cakes, piping hot out of the fire.

Also some coffee with cream and sugar, piping hot out of the machine.

[The OED gives pipinge and pipeinge as v.rr., variant readings, for pipyng. The ersatz Chaucer is mine.]

“[I]t made me to weep with delight”

From a spam comment left for my post on how to e-mail a professor:

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No, because I never click on the skeevy URLs that end such comments.

A Google search for “a frightful dilemma for me personally” returns 28,600 results, with many variations:

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It was a frightful dilemma for me personally, however, understanding the specialised manner you solved the issue made me to jump for joy.

I cannot claim to jump for joy (or leap over contentment), but I do I take perverse pleasure in reading such stuff before deleting. O brave new world, that has such spammers in it.

Related reading
All spam-themed posts (Pinboard)

Pocket notebook sighting (Naked City)

[Detective Adam Flint (Paul Burke) and notebook. From the Naked City episode “Vengeance Is a Wheel” (March 15, 1961). Click for a larger view.]

Pocket notebooks are everywhere in Naked City. In a scene that now looks slightly comic, one police officer reads out license-plate numbers and a dozen others dutifully copy into their notebooks. But this notebook is ready for its close-up. The short word must be and, but I’m at a loss about the rest. Any guesses?

Related reading
All Naked City posts (Pinboard)

And more notebook sightings
Angels with Dirty Faces : Cat People : Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne : Extras : Journal d’un curé de campagne : The House on 92nd Street : The Lodger : Murder, Inc. : The Mystery of the Wax Museum : The Palm Beach Story : Pickpocket : Pickup on South Street : Quai des Orfèvres : Railroaded! : Red-Headed Woman : Rififi : Route 66 : The Sopranos : Spellbound : State Fair : T-Men : Union Station : The Woman in the Window