The Naked City, then and now

Scouting NY looks at filming locations for The Naked City (dir. Jules Dassin, 1948), then and now. In three parts: 1, 2, and 3.

The frightening truth that they don’t want you to know about sardines

[Field & Stream, June 1977.]

Yes, sardines are addictive. Street names: bait, Moroccan greys, Norwegian kings. I scored four cans of kings last night, on sale, two for five.

This post is for Matt Thomas, who seems to be intent on developing a sardine habit.

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End of the U.S. sardine industry
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New directions in sardines
Satan’s seafood

Vietnamese egg cream

I was surprised and delighted to see “Egg Cream Soda” listed among the drink offerings at a nearby Vietnamese restaurant. But this egg cream is not the New York concoction of chocolate syrup, milk, and seltzer. The menu describes the drink like so: “sweet drink made from egg yolk, sweetened condensed milk & club soda served over ice.” And the menu really calls it an egg cream soda, or soda sua tlot ga. The tlot must be a typo: the Internets identify this drink as soda sua hot ga, or soda sữa hột gà.

Life is better when one is willing to marvel at ordinary things.

Raymond Carver on words and punctuation

Raymond Carver, writing in The New York Times in 1981:

That’s all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones, with the punctuation in the right places so that they can best say what they are meant to say. If the words are heavy with the writer’s own unbridled emotions, or if they are imprecise and inaccurate for some other reason — if the words are in any way blurred — the reader’s eyes will slide right over them and nothing will be achieved.

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Raymond Carver and Ovid
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[1983 or so: I missed hearing Raymond Carver read. It was a late Friday afternoon, it had been a long day, I didn’t want to schlep down to the Northeastern campus. Some other time, I thought. There never was one.]

Satan’s seafood

[Life, June 1, 1959.]

I would have thought that the archfiend made his minions do the seasoning.

In my childhood, all sardines came from Martel. But eaters of a certain age may recall Underwood Sardines. The company’s FAQ page notes that the sardine line “was discontinued years ago.”

Underwood of course is best known for its Deviled Ham. Again, from the Underwood FAQ: “The Underwood Devil logo, which was registered in 1870, is believed to be the oldest registered trademark still in use for a prepackaged food product in the United States.” The Straight Dope has an excellent survey of deviled-food history.

Related posts
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End of the U.S. sardine industry
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Recently updated

Another college president plagiarizing? A second Minnesota college president has been accused of plagiarism.

Ralph Ellison stamp

[Click for a much larger view.]

I’m a year late, but my knowledge of stamps is limited to what I see — or in this case what Elaine sees — in our post office. In 2014 the United States Postal Service issued a stamp honoring Ralph Ellison. Art by Kadir Nelson, from a photograph by Gordon Parks. Design by Ethel Kessler. Ninety-one cents = three ounces.

The USPS has a page with three writers’ thoughts about Ellison (who was born 101 years ago yesterday).

Related reading
All OCA Ralph Ellison posts (Pinboard)

Domestic comedy

“It’s too bad we can’t go there on Wednesday. The phở is cheaper on Wednesdays.”

“We’ll just have to get phở -price phở.”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

Remedy that?

In the short conversation preceding this week’s Sunday Puzzle, a contestant confessed to having not seen A Fish Called Wanda. And NPR’s Rachel Martin said, “Remedy that, this weekend.”

I can’t recall ever hearing someone say remedy that. The phrasing seems to have some currency on Twitter; the first results of a Google search for “you should remedy that” are all Twitter-based: “If you’ve never, you should remedy that”; “You should remedy that, the dude was a legend”; “OH MY GOD YOU SHOULD REMEDY THAT IMMEDIATELY.” Searching for “you should remedy that” in Twitter brings up many, many tweets.

Reader, is remedy that, like, a thing? And did you know about it before reading this post? If not, reading this post has remedied that.

Harry Mathews on writing

Harry Mathews, from 20 Lines a Day (Dalkey Archive Press, 1988), a book that developed from a daily writing exercise:

Writing well is so hard — that’s why it’s fun to go for.