Mystery actor

[Who?]

He’s a fancy man here. But anyone of a certain age who spent childhood in front of a warm television should find him instantly recognizable. Make your guess in the form of a comment. No using the Google!

*

4:33 p.m.: What I find difficult other people often find easy. And the other way around. (See the question marks below.) I thought that this mystery actor would be an easy call, but apparently not. He is Robert Shayne, who would go on to play Inspector William “Bill” Henderson in the television series Adventures of Superman (known to mortal children as Superman ). In Nobody Lives Forever (dir. Jean Negulesco, 1946), Shayne plays nightclub owner Chet King.

Eight more mystery actors
? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ?

Mongol pencil sighting

[Walter Brennan demonstrates for Faye Emerson the smooth-writing quality of the Mongol pencil. Click either image for a larger view.]

It’s a Mongol all right. (See ferrule below.) Earlier in this movie, Brennan’s character Pop Gruber worries that he’ll end up selling pencils. I’ve made it happen here.

Nobody Lives Forever (dir. Jean Negulesco, 1946) is a pleasant enough movie. Faye Emerson and Geraldine Fitzgerald make an interesting bad-woman/good-woman pair. John Garfield seems something of a cipher — all surface.


[“Your best buy’s Mongol,” says Brennan.]

Related reading
All OCA Mongol posts
All OCA pencil posts (Pinboard)

Recently updated

The U of Iowa has a new president Now with satire.

Henry moves, at least for a day

[Henry , November 5, 2015.]

Henry has always lived in a house. (The strip shows a front door, grass, a garage.) But today he appears to be living in that darkest and most ancient of apartment-dwelling situations — “The bathroom’s at the end of the hall.” Sad.

Related reading
All OCA Henry posts (Pinboard)

Horehound on my trail

I am at the tail end of a cold that began with seasonal allergies and now lingers as a tickle in the throat and occasional fits of coughing. (Dang leaf mold!) Thus I come to sing (between coughs) the praises of Claeys Horehound Candies. They soothe the throat in a way that no cough drop can. And they have an odd but delightful dowdy flavor — austere, grown-up, not overly sweet, not candyesque.

Warning: If you don’t live within reach of a farm-and-home store, Claeys might be difficult to come by. And given this variety’s name, awkward to ask about.

[Post title with apologies to Robert Johnson.]

Stoner and adjunct life

Like Stoner, I am an instructor at the same university where I did my doctorate. Like him, I teach freshman composition. Like him, I’ve come to love teaching and to consider it my vocation. But this is where our similarities end.

Maggie Doherty, an adjunct instructor, writes about John Williams’s novel Stoner .

Other Stoner posts
On teaching as a job
On “the true nature of the University”

“No worries”

Did you know that “no worries” began as an Australianism? From Bryan Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day:

The actor and writer Paul Hogan popularized the phrase outside Australia in his Crocodile Dundee movies (the memorable one of 1986, the less memorable sequel of 1988, and the wholly forgettable second sequel of 2001). Hogan's catchphrase was “No worries, mate.” The wide appeal of those movies made the phrase something of a vogue expression, sometimes with and sometimes without “mate” tacked on the end. . . .

But beginning about 2000, the expression had spread into mainstream American English without any hint of its foreignness.

I will confess to a sparing use of “no worries” in conversation. (I’ve used the expression twice in these pages, each time in a comment.) But I always thought that “no worries” was a Britishism. And I was unaware of mate . And as must be apparent by now, I’ve never watched a Crocodile Dundee movie.

But I do subscribe to the Usage Tip of the Day. You can too.

Related reading
All OCA Garner-centric posts (Pinboard)
Britishisms

[I’d like to link to the full explanation, but the Usage Tip of the Day is not published online.]

Domestic comedy

“Should I just chuck these catalogues?”

“Yeah.”

“We’ll get more.”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

“What on earth is an artist?”

Van Veen is speaking with a “fellow student whom we shall call Dick,” Dick Cheshire:


Vladimir Nabokov, Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle (1969).

Related reading
All OCA Nabokov posts (Pinboard)

[Underground observatories were proposed as early as 1903. The Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events has an oddly Nabokovian name.]

Anglic

Among many efforts to reform English spelling: Anglic, the creation of Dr. R. E. Zachrisson (1880–1937), professor of English at Uppsala University. A sample:

Forskor and sevn yeerz agoe our faadherz braut forth on this kontinent a nue naeshon, konsee vd in liberty, and dedikaeted to the propozishon that aul men are kreae ted equal.

Quoted in 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).

And a rejoinder to all such schemes, from a recent installment of Bryan Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day:

A person who has invested countless hours and endless labor learning to spell irrationally has an unconscious vested interest in the irrational system once he has mastered it, and no amount of argument on behalf of ease to his descendants will shake him.

Mario Pei, “English Spelling,” in Language Today: A Survey of Current Linguistic Thought (1967).

Also from The American Language
The American a : The American v. the Englishman : “Are you a speed-cop?” : Benjamin Franklin and spelling : B.V.D. : English American English : Franco-American : “[N]o faculty so weak as the English faculty” : On professor : Playing policy : “There are words enough already” : The -thon , dancing and walking Through -thing and -thin’ : The verb to contact