A pocket notebook sighting

[Ministry of Fear (dir. Fritz Lang, 1944).]

The men with hats, knife, and notebook are from Scotland Yard. Ray Milland wishes he could have a notebook like that.

More notebook sightings
Angels with Dirty Faces : Ball of Fire : Cat People : City Girl : Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne : Dragnet : Extras : Foreign Correspondent : Homicide : The Honeymooners : The House on 92nd Street : Journal d’un curé de campagne : The Last Laugh : Le Million : The Lodger : Mr. Holmes : Murder at the Vanities : Murder by Contract : Murder, Inc. : The Mystery of the Wax Museum : Naked City : The Naked Edge : The Palm Beach Story : Perry Mason : Pickpocket : Pickup on South Street : Pushover : Quai des Orfèvres : Railroaded! : Red-Headed Woman : Rififi : Route 66 : The Sopranos : Spellbound : State Fair : T-Men : Union Station : Where the Sidewalk Ends : The Woman in the Window

[And yes, that is Ray Milland, not Paul Manafort.]

Scabs and banjos

Chris Matthews, speaking of Donald Trump on Meet the Press today: “He knows he can find the issues that rip the scab off this cultural divide, and he plays it like a banjo.”

Matthews has turned to rip the scab off before. He’s invoked the banjo before as well. But to compare scab-ripping facility to banjo chops — four-string? five-string? clawhammer? Scruggs-style? — that’s something new. I’d liken that move to straining after rhetorical greatness and pulling a groin muscle. Or something.

As you may have guessed, I’m not a Chris Matthews fan. I still recall with pleasure his 2007 appearance on The Daily Show: “This is a book interview from hell!”

Related posts
Chris Matthews disappoints : Chris Matthews explains it all for you : Chris Matthews on sex

[I’ve added a comma to the Meet the Press transcript. Why not?]

Domestic comedy

“It’s gotten to the point where he’s finally lost all of his lack of respect for me.”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

From the Saturday Stumper

A nice touch in today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Andy Kravis. The clue for 53-Across, seven letters: “They fill take-out orders.” No spoilers; the answer is in the comments.

Finishing the Saturday Stumper is always cause for minor self-congratulation.

Kafka, strange and stranger

From two manuscripts of a story, one strange, the other stranger:


Franz Kafka, “Wedding Preparations in the Country,” in The Complete Stories, ed. Nahum N. Glatzer, trans. Ernst Kaiser and Eithne Wilkins (New York: Schocken, 1971).

Related reading
All OCA Kafka posts (Pinboard)

World Book Things

[Mom holds the cat as Dustin tears out of the house. Click for a larger view.]

Five minutes into the first episode of the new season of Stranger Things, I was thrilled to see the World Book Encyclopedia, or at least a partial set, on a shelf in Dustin’s house. In this screenshot, the World Book volumes are at the top left. The white, green, and gold are recognizable anywhere, at least for a viewer of a certain age. Admirably fanatical care goes into set decoration for this show: the World Book is onscreen for mere seconds, just enough for someone to notice.

[I’m the proud child of a World Book family. See also this Atlantic piece.]

Little Luther

Reformation 500 Flat Luther with Lutheran Pastor Frederick Muhlenberg the first Speaker of the House of Representatives. pic.twitter.com/2Vu6qLSprg

— John Shimkus (@RepShimkus) October 26, 2017

It appears that my representative in Congress, John Shimkus (R, Illinois-15), likes to play with paper dolls. Okay. But it’s not okay to affix a paper doll to a painting that doesn’t belong to you. This 1881 painting of Frederick Muhlenberg hangs in the United States House of Representatives. Representative Shimkus has also shared a photograph of the doll nestled in the arm of a statue of John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg. The 1889 statue stands in National Statuary Hall.

Related reading
All OCA John Shimkus posts

[Look closely and you’ll see that there’s no photoshopping involved. The doll is attached to the frame. The doll’s shadow falls on the wall.]

Shine on, Hallmark Channel

Our fambly has found reliable entertainment in the local cable company’s plot summaries of Hallmark Channel movies, summaries at least as good as the movies themselves. Here’s one for Harvest Moon:

A rich girl loses her wealth when her family goes bankrupt, so she heads to a pumpkin farm they own and uses her ingenuity to create a line of pumpkin skin care.

Thoughts:

~ It’s a good thing that even in bankruptcy, the family owns a pumpkin farm.

~ But wait: should that be owned?

~ Between the time I photographed the description and wrote this post, Harvest Moon seems to have come and gone. The Hallmark Channel has already moved on to Christmas movies. And it’s not even Thanksgiving. Or even Halloween.

~ As Elaine reminds me, Illinois is The Great Pumpkin State. If this movie didn’t take place in Illinois, well, it should have.

~ Skin care for pumpkins probably takes a lot of ingenuity.

Related posts
I am a prisoner of Hallmark Movies and Mysteries : Hallmark ex machina : The Bridge, continued

Two fine podcasts

Gastropod : Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley look at “food through the lens of science and history.” I’ve listened to the episodes about Fluff, seltzer, and tea.

Innovation Hub : Kara Miller and guests explore “new avenues in education, science, medicine, transportation, and more.” I’ve listened to the episodes about groupthink and obsession.

Both podcasts offer substantial content, no fluff (the lowercase variety).

Proust: “To love life today”

A question posed in the Paris newspaper L’Intransigeant, summer 1922:

An American scientist announces that the world will end, or at least that such a huge part of the continent will be destroyed, and in such a sudden way, that death will be the certain fate of hundreds of millions of people. If this prediction were confirmed, what do you think would be its effect on people between the time when they acquired the aforementioned certainty and the moment of cataclysm? Finally, as far as you’re concerned, what would you do in this last hour?

Marcel Proust responded in a letter:

I think that life would suddenly seem wonderful to us if we were threatened to die as you say. Just think of how many projects, travels, love affairs, studies, it — our life — hides from us, made invisible by our laziness which, certain of a future, delays them incessantly.

But let all this threaten to become impossible for ever, how beautiful it would become again! Ah! If only the cataclysm doesn’t happen this time, we won't miss visiting the new galleries of the Louvre, throwing ourselves at the feet of Miss X, making a trip to India.

The cataclysm doesn’t happen, we don’t do any of it, because we find ourselves back in the heart of normal life, where negligence deadens desire. And yet we shouldn’t have needed the cataclysm to love life today. It would have been enough to think that we are humans, and that death may come this evening.

The question and Proust’s answer are quoted in Alain de Botton’s How Proust Can Change Your Life (New York: Vintage, 1997). I’ve had these passages typed and waiting to be posted for — ahem — years.

What I would do if the world were to end in an hour: call my children, my mom, my brother, a few friends, and sit with Elaine and listen to music, if she’s agreeable. Maybe Bach? But Elaine just told that she’d rather play than listen. So we could play together. I’m assuming we’d be together.

What would you do?

Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)

[By the time I read de Botton, Proust had already changed my life. In other words, I read In Search of Lost Time first. I’m taking “this last hour” literally, as did at least some of those who responded in 1922.]