A Naked City smile

[No smile, start of smile, smile, no smile. From the Naked City episode “The Tragic Success of Alfred Tiloff,” November 8, 1961. Click for larger views.]

As Elaine and I travel through the streets and alleys of Naked City, we like to watch for interesting moments in the background. The small crowds that assemble in many scenes are conspicuously mannerly: they stand back and let the police — that is, the actors and crew — do their work. Every so often a pedestrian in motion will stop and stare.

This young lady’s self-conscious smile at the camera is the most enjoyable background moment we’ve seen. And it’s fleeting — there and gone in a fraction of a second. Get back in character, young lady! This is the Naked City.

In the foreground, Jan Sterling and Jack Klugman as Myrtle and Alfy Tiloff.

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Snowplow parents

Would that this news were from The Onion:

“Helicopter parents,” already ubiquitous in undergraduate admissions, are invading the graduate-school process, too, driven by the rising cost of advanced degrees as well as by hard-to-break habits of coddling.

Some of these parents have become so aggressive that they’ve required a new moniker: “snowplow parents,” for their impulse to push obstacles out of their adult children’s way.

“It’s the new norm,” Thomas P. Rock, assistant dean for enrollment services at Columbia University’s Teachers College, says of parents’ involvement in graduate-school admissions. “It’s the Gilmore Girls phenomenon. Moms want to stay best friends with their daughter and all her friends.”

Mr. Rock has fielded calls from more than one set of parents about the status of a student’s application. A few times, when he asked why the student couldn't have called herself, the parent said she was out shopping at the mall.

Parents call Teachers College professors to complain about grades. They descend on weekends set aside for visits by prospective students who have been admitted. One student’s family came dressed in matching plaid Burberry jackets.

“It’s just something we’re not used to,” Mr. Rock said.

The article is behind the paywall: Parents Now Get Themselves Involved in Graduate Admissions, Too (The Chronicle of Higher Education).

[I hadn’t realized how much embarrassment we’ve saved our children.]

Waxtex!

[Life, November 2, 1942. Click for a fresher view.]

The guy seems more interested in the paper than in the sandwich. But heck, it’s Waxtex!

The Menasha Corporation is still going.

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The dowdiest wrap in the kitchen
From the Wax Paper Institute, Inc.

From the Waxed Paper Institute, Inc.

[Life, January 26, 1948.]

It sounds like a Bob and Ray creation, but it was real. A 1962 court ruling describes the Waxed Paper Institute as “a trade association which published reports of aggregate industry sales, prices, and product statistics for the benefit of its members.” Though the Institute seems to have vanished, waxed paper lives on, protecting freshness.

A related post
The dowdiest wrap in the kitchen

The dowdiest wrap in the kitchen

It is wax paper, for several reasons. It is a kind of paper. It is far older than aluminum foil. It may bear the quaint name Cut-Rite. And it appears in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939):

At noon the tractor driver stopped sometimes near a tenant house and opened his lunch: sandwiches wrapped in waxed paper, white bread, pickle, cheese, Spam, a piece of pie branded like an engine part.

“Wax paper,” to my mind, is dowdier than “waxed paper.” (Older too: 1844 v. 1853.) “Wax” recalls wax beans, one of the dowdiest canned vegetables — and one of the most disturbing.

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[For most American consumers, Cut-Rite is wax paper. When I make a sandwich to go, I always use Cut-Rite and foil. And yes, that tractor driver is destroying people’s livelihoods.]

Word of the day: Velox

[“From Dingburg to Palookaville,” Zippy, February 3, 2014.]

From Photographic Memorabilia:

Kodak VELOX paper was a very slow printing paper, producing a blue-black image, suitable for contact printing only, where the negative is placed in contact with the paper to produce a print of the same size. Kodak discontinued the manufacture of Velox paper in 1968.

The Oxford English Dictionary (which includes proprietary names) has no entry for Velox.

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Jim Leddy tells it like it is

After a stretch of time in the hospital and a longer stretch in rehab (not that kind of rehab), my dad is back home. One might think “Just in time for the Super Bowl,” but my dad takes no interest in football. He is indeed his son’s father.

And my dad is a gentleman — always. So I was amused and enlightened when he described the disorder of life in rehab like so: “Have you heard people use the expression ‘fucked up’?” Yes, Dad, but I never before heard you use it. That’s the measure of a place where a request for hot tea at breakfast brought iced, day after day after day.

Welcome home, Dad, and thanks to everyone who has sent good wishes his way.

[Dialogue used with permission. And notice that my dad was quoting.]

Overheard

While reading in a café: “I don’t hate you — I just couldn’t tell you that I was upset."

And a couple of minutes later: “I don’t hate you — I just couldn’t tell you that I was upset.”

And then again.

Aha: they were running lines from a play, or from an episode of Girls, or something.

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The Doomsday rule

BrownStudies explains the Doomsday rule, a nifty way to figure out the day of the week for a given date. Such stuff holds an irresistible appeal for the ten-year-old secret agent in me. Because say you were like stuck on a desert island or something, and you didn’t have a calendar, and you needed to figure out the day of the week that something was going to happen — well, you get the idea.

Last night I challenged my spouse to test me: pick a date, any date. And yes, June 23, 2014, falls on a Monday. It’s the rule.

See also Super Minimalist Micro Calendar.

Making it work

From a New York Times interview with Elaine Stritch:

Now that you’ve been settled in Michigan for almost a year, do you find yourself missing New York?

No, I don’t miss places. I really don’t. I get up in the morning, the sun is out, I’m a happy clam. I’m not unhappy because I’m not in this bedroom or that bedroom, or this living room or that living room. I’m going to make it work wherever I go.

I like her perspective.