Our mutual frown

I was moved to read Our Mutual Friend when someone assured me that it, not Bleak House, is, but of course, the greatest Dickens novel. (It is a truth universally acknowledged, &c.) But no. Our Mutual Friend feels like the work of a tired writer, and it was making us tired. (Falling-asleep-between-sentences tired.) We made it almost halfway through before acknowledging that we just didn’t care enough to continue. Back to Willa Cather, The Old Beauty and Others .

Bleak House is the greatest Dickens novel I’ve read. Elaine, who hasn’t read Bleak House, chooses Great Expectations .

The Mac app Acorn

John Gruber at Daring Fireball wrote a post yesterday recommending the Mac image editor Acorn, now on sale for $24.99 (half price). Gruber’s closing words: “Just buy it.” I did, and it made editing the advertisements in the previous post a breeze, or a piece of cake, your choice.

To my mind, Acorn is a far friendlier app than the free (and, like Acorn, powerful) GIMP. And Acorn makes it possible to rotate and crop images with greater precision than is available in Apple’s iPhoto and Photos apps. (Those comic-strip panels appear on an angle in the original advertisements.) I’ve barely begun to explore Acorn’s possibilities, but I am already a happy camper.

[The cake is yellow, with chocolate frosting.]

Dressing for school

Another search for homework: five sentences about dressing. I’ll bite.


[Life, June 17, 1940.]


[Life, September 29, 1941. Click for larger views.]

These sentences will also work for five sentences about mayonnaise or real, and they offer at least a start on five sentences about Peg or Clare or starchy filler.

Other “five sentences” posts
Bleak House : The cat : Clothes : The driver : My house : Life : Life on the moon : Orange : The past (1) : The past (2) : The post office : The rabbit : The ship : The sky : Smoking : The telephone : The world

[People of the world: do your own homework.]

Playing policy

Another Mencken footnote, from a brief discussion of Italian loan-words:

The word policy, which was used in the United States from about 1885 to 1915 to designate the form of gambling now called numbers , was from the Italian polizza . But it apparently came in by way of English, though with a change in meaning, and it is now virtually obsolete.

H. L. Mencken, The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States , 4th ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1936).

The term policy certainly persisted in African-American culture. Here is an episode of the podcast Uncensored History of the Blues about playing policy.

The Oxford English Dictionary traces the gambling sense of policy to the Middle French police, “written proof, certificate.” The Dictionary traces another meaning of policy , “ a voting paper; (also) a voucher,” to polizza.

Also from The American Language
The American v. the Englishman : B.V.D. : “[N]o faculty so weak as the English faculty” : “There are words enough already” : The -thon , dancing and walking : The verb to contact

5 sentences of orange

More homework! Here’s a start:

Orange you ashamed to be cheating?

Other “five sentences” posts
Bleak House : The cat : Clothes : The driver : My house : Life : Life on the moon : The past (1) : The past (2) : The post office : The rabbit : The ship : The sky : Smoking : The telephone : The world

Five sentences on the sky

Ever since I wrote a post about five sentences from Charles Dickens’s Bleak House , Google searches for five sentences (that is, for pre-fabricated homework) have been ending up at Orange Crate Art. Recently: five sentences on the sky . Consider it done:

Your thighs are appletrees whose blossoms touch the sky. Which sky? The sky where Watteau hung a lady’s slipper.

The Sky is an immortal Tent built by the Sons of Los.

Surrender Dorothy.

Other “five sentences” posts
The cat : Clothes : The driver : My house : Life : Life on the moon : The past (1) : The past (2) : The post office : The rabbit : The ship : Smoking : The telephone : The world

VDP and Harry Shearer

Van Dyke Parks visits Harry Shearer’s Le Show. A smart and funny conversation, with a virtual cast of dozens that includes Ry Cooder, Astrud Gilberto, Eartha Kitt, Randy Newman, Brian Wilson, Howlin’ Wolf, and Paul Revere and the Raiders. Also with lovely performances of “Hominy Grove,” “Jump!,” and “Orange Crate Art,” and a snippet of “Anything Goes.” Also with a Welsh proverb: “Nothing is good when better is possible.” Words to live by there.

Related reading
All OCA Van Dyke Parks posts (Pinboard)

Asti’s

A reader left a comment on a post about West Fourth Street and Naked City recalling Asti’s Restaurant. Like Bianchi & Margherita, a restaurant mentioned in that post, Asti’s offered opera-centric dining. From Harold H. Hart’s Hart’s Guide to New York City (New York: Hart Publishing, 1964):

ASTI’S
CAPACITY 150
13 E. 12th St.
(bet. Fifth Ave. and University Pl.)
AL 5-9095

5 PM–2:30 AM, TUES. THRU SUN. CLOSED JULY, AUG.

MINIMUM: $3, FRI. AND SAT.
NO CHARGE AT BAR.

If you like opera, you’ll like Asti’s. The hired hands provide the diversion. Whenever the bouncer, barmaid, bus boy, or barkeep feels an aria coming on, the warbler just passes a signal to the pianist and lets go.

And what you’ll hear is surprisingly good, for most of the staff has had professional operatic experience. The singing of the Anvil Chorus from Il Trovatore is a sure-fire tour de force . Accompanying the chorus, there is a tintinnabulation of clinks coming from the glasses on the bar as they are struck rhythmically by the attendants.

Everything here has an Italian accent — the strains from Verdi and Puccini, the cuisine, and the gusto which which with which the staff discharges its chores. The food is adequate. Suffice it to say that it’s worthwhile to come here for the singing which is lusty, continuous, and thoroughly exhilarating. A table d’hote dinner, averaging $6, is served till 10, after which an à la carte supper menu takes over.

Asti’s, or Asti, began as a speakeasy in 1924 or ’25 and closed on December 31, 1999. By the end of its life, the restaurant had 1,200 photographs of opera singers on its walls. The building now houses Strip House, a steak place.

As much as I love the idea of an Asti’s or a Bianchi & Margherita, the relentlessness of it all would leave me exhausted. (I am a highly sensitive person.) This short documentary gives some idea of what an evening at Asti’s might have been like.

Thanks, Jeff, for pointing me to Asti’s.

Related reading
An Asti’s menu (eBay)

[I would have scanned the entry from Hart’s Guide, but I didn’t want to risk damaging the book’s spine.]

John Rabe and David Foster Wallace

John Rabe, the host of KPCC’s Off-Ramp, interviews Dan John Miller, the actor who plays an NPR host interviewing David Foster Wallace in The End of the Tour (dir. James Ponsoldt, 2015). That host was Rabe, who interviewed Wallace for Minnesota Public Radio in 1996. Also available from the link above, the 1996 interview itself.

My favorite moment from 1996: “Bayer is a name I trust.”

A related post
My take on The End of the Tour

A joke in the traditional manner

What is the favorite toy of philosophers’ children?

No spoilers. The punchline is in the comments.

More jokes in the traditional manner
The Autobahn : Did you hear about the cow coloratura? : Elementary school : A Golden Retriever : How did Bela Lugosi know what to expect? : How did Samuel Clemens do all his long-distance traveling? : What did the doctor tell his forgetful patient to do? : What did the plumber do when embarrassed? : What happens when a senior citizen visits a podiatrist? : Which member of the orchestra was best at handling money? : Why did the doctor spend his time helping injured squirrels? : Why did Oliver Hardy attempt a solo career in movies? : Why did the ophthalmologist and his wife split up? : Why was Santa Claus wandering the East Side of Manhattan?

[“In the traditional manner”: by or à la my dad. He gets credit for all but the cow coloratura, the squirrel-doctor, Santa Claus, and this one.]