Separated at birth

 
[The actors Andrew Tombes and Don Lake.]

Andrew Tombes was in many, many movies. I know Don Lake best from Christopher Guest’s faux documentaries.

Also separated at birth
Nicholson Baker and Lawrence Ferlinghetti : Bérénice Bejo and Paula Beer : Ted Berrigan and C. Everett Koop : David Bowie and Karl Held : Victor Buono and Dan Seymour : John Davis Chandler and Steve Buscemi : Ray Collins and Mississippi John Hurt : Broderick Crawford and Vladimir Nabokov : Ted Cruz and Joe McCarthy : Benedict Cumberbatch and Michael Gough : Henry Daniell and Anthony Wiener : Jacques Derrida, Peter Falk, and William Hopper : Elaine Hansen (of Davey and Goliath) and Blanche Lincoln : Barbara Hale and Vivien Leigh : Harriet Sansom Harris and Phoebe Nicholls : Ton Koopman and Oliver Sacks : Steve Lacy and Myron McCormick : William H. Macy and Michael A. Monahan : Fredric March and Tobey Maguire : Molly Ringwald and Victoria Zinny

Proust’s letters online

“The first tranche of the letters, several hundred related to World War I, is expected to be published online by Nov. 11, 2018, to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the end of the war”: M. Proust’s letters are going online.

Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)

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