The Voyager Golden Records

The sounds of the Voyager Golden Records (there were two): coming soon, on LPs and CDs.

Pocket notebook sighting

[20th Century Women (dir. Mike Mills, 2016). Click either image for a much larger view.]

Dorothea Fields (Annette Bening) wanted to be an Air Force pilot and went to flight school, but the war ended before she was done. It makes sense that her pocket notebook would be one with a military background. It’s this notebook, its pages sewn in signatures, with evergreen covers and the word Memorandum in lime cursive. The notebook opens from the top:



I bought a stash of the side-opening Memorandum some time ago. They’re extremely well-made notebooks.

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 : Ministry of Fear : 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 : A Stranger in Town : T-Men : Union Station : Where the Sidewalk Ends : The Woman in the Window

Enter Sluggo

[Zippy, November 26, 2017.]

First panel: “Zippy read so many ‘Little Max’ comic books by Ham Fisher that he became Little Max!” And went on to live by himself in a little brick house. But then things get all Pandora-like.

All I know about Little Max is what I read in Zippy — and that he was Joe Palooka’s sidekick.

Venn reading
All OCA Nancy posts : Nancy and Zippy posts : Zippy posts (Pinboard)

[Notice the tiny Sluggo in the first of these panels.]

Yielding in Massachusetts

In The New York Times Magazine, John Hodgman answers a question about driving in Massachusetts: what should a driver do when someone is standing on the sidewalk at a Yield to Pedestrians crosswalk, not yet crossing? Hodgman says the driver should yield: “Don’t be a masshole.”

What Hodgman doesn’t make explicit is that yielding for someone still on the sidewalk isn’t required by Massachusetts law. But says a Cambridge lawyer experienced in crosswalk cases: "If they have the intent of crossing within a reasonable distance of it, then yeah, you gotta stop."

[Drivers in Brookline (the town referenced in Hodgman’s piece) really do stop at Yield to Pedestrian signs, at least the ones in Coolidge Corner, at least most of the time, at least in my experience. I’ve added commas to the lawyer’s sentence.]

A representative walk

Air, mint, air : air : air : air : air, leaves : leaves, air : air : air : air : air : burning leaves : burning leaves : air : air : air : air : air : air : air : air : air : air : air : air : air : air : air : air : air, turkey, air : air : air : air, fireplace, air : air : air : air, leaves, air : air : air : air : air : air : air : air : air : air : air : air : air : air, leaves, air : air, leaves, air : air.

[Inspired by something my friend Sara McWhorter wrote and sent. The colons separate the fifty minutes of walking. Mint? Lip balm.]

From the Saturday Stumper

A clever clue from the Newsday Saturday Stumper, 26-Across, four letters: “Hail in Oz.” No spoilers; the answer is in the comments.

Today’s puzzle is by Andrew Bell Lewis. Finishing a Saturday Stumper is always cause for minor self-congratulation.

Rations detail

[Kyle Surges, WWII Rations, detail. Oil on panel. 9" × 18". 2015.]

Kyle Surges’s paintings knock me out. Visit the artist’s website for more.

We three kings

Donald Trump reminds me of three kings, or one king and two tyrants, really: he combines Agamemnon’s contempt for truth (“Fake news!” Trump would have told the seer Calchas), Oedipus’s egomania (“I alone can fix it,” Trump would have said of the Sphinx’s curse), and Creon’s strutting authoritarianism (“I’m president, and you’re not,” Trump would have told Oedipus when ordering him back in the house).

But unlike Oedipus, Trump has no interest in the pursuit of truth: he would have fired Tiresias and ended the investigation of the murder of Laertes. Oedipus chose to pursue that investigation, wherever it might lead. But of course he had no idea where it would lead.

Also unlike Oedipus: Trump would never have solved the Sphinx’s riddle to begin with.

A related post
Word of the day: tyrant

[In Iliad 1, when Calchas tells Agamemnon why the Achaean forces have been hit by a plague and what to do to remove it, Agamemnon complains that Calchas never gives him any good omens. Agamemon’s the king; Oedipus and Creon, tyrants.]

Sardine art

[Maudie (dir. Aisling Walsh, 2016).]

The Canadian artist Maud Lewis used sardine cans to hold her paints. Here, look. Notice the Campbell’s Soup can too, put to un-Warholian use.

Today is National Sardines Day. Let us, each in our own way, honor the small oily fish.

Related reading
All OCA sardine posts (Pinboard)

Thanksgiving 1917

[“Thanksgiving Food Never So Expensive: Turkeys Get Up to 50 Cents a Pound and Cranberries Bring 25 Cents a Quart.” The New York Times, November 29, 1917.]

Happy Thanksgiving to all.

Previous Thanksgiving posts
In jail, 1916 : At the Waldorf Astoria, 1915 : In jail, 1914 : In jail, 1913 : Thanksgiving and mortality : In jail, 1912 : Competitive eating, 1911 : A 1917 greeting card : A found letter : Sing Sing, 1908 : Sing Sing, 1907 : I remember Thanksgiving

[Nathan Straus, co-owner of R.H. Macy & Company and Abraham & Straus, had a long history as a philanthropist.]