How to help

How to help people affected by Hurricane Florence: The New York Times has suggestions. We just donated to the Diaper Bank of North Carolina.

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Andrew Bell Lewis, may appear “Knotty, at first” (67-Across, seven letters). But the puzzle turns out to be doable, very. Knotty but nice.

Two clues that I especially like: 19-Across, fourteen letters: “Master of the familiar.” Seeing the answer (is it a giveaway?) got me started. And 40-Across, seven letters, “Dorm room refreshments.” No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.

Orange Crate Art at fourteen

My blog is fourteen years old today. It’s an awkward age. But nothing is wrong. Everything’s fine. Just leave me alone, okay? Can’t a person have any privacy around here? Jeez!

[Door slams.]

On behalf of my fourteen-year-old, thank you, everyone who’s reading.

On the run in Los Angeles

Frank Enley (Van Heflin) runs down Clay Street as the funicular railway Angels Flight passes overhead. Clay Street no longer exists.


[Act of Violence (dir. Fred Zinnemann, 1949). Click either image for a larger view.]

Then to the 2nd Street Tunnel. Or is it the 3rd Street Tunnel? Only one way to find out. Run, Frank, run.

EXchange names on screen

[Act of Violence (dir. Fred Zinnemann, 1949. Click for a larger view.]

I like the r for residence, even for a fictional residence in fictional Santa Lisa, California.

More EXchange names on screen
The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse : Armored Car Robbery : Baby Face : Blast of Silence : The Blue Dahlia : Boardwalk Empire : Born Yesterday : Chinatown : The Dark Corner : Deception : Dick Tracy’s Deception : Down Three Dark Streets : Dream House : East Side, West Side : The Little Giant : The Man Who Cheated Himself : Modern Marvels : Murder by Contract : Murder, My Sweet : My Week with Marilyn : Naked City (1) : Naked City (2) : Naked City (3) : Naked City (4) : Naked City (5) : Naked City (6) : Naked City (7) : Nightfall : Nightmare Alley : Perry Mason : The Public Enemy : Railroaded! : Side Street : Sweet Smell of Success : Tension : This Gun for Hire

This is your arm on drugs

[Alan Garner, It’s O.K. to Say No to Drugs!, ill. Rick Detorie (New York: TOR Books, 1987.]

That arm! This image is a standing joke in our fambly. I recently rediscovered its source.

Rick Detorie went on to better things: in 1988, he created the comic strip One Big Happy — as in “one big happy family,” not “one big happy arm.”

Ads ’n’ rockets

In the post-millennial Subsidized Time of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, years are named for corporate sponsors: Year of the Whopper, Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad, Year of Glad, &c. Somewhere Wallace is shaking his head: both yes and no.

Related reading
All OCA DFW posts (Pinboard)

Eleven!

Our favorite granddaughter is eleven months old today. She enjoys pulling tissues from the box (magic!) and polishing things with wipes (floors, toys). She digs music and wants to see that everyone else digs it too. She likes French toast. And she’s one-handed walking. She is on her way to toddlerdom. Yay, Talia!

[Sorry, no photo. We all began to feel skittish about posting photos for all the Internets to see.]

Pluto in the news

Pluto is back: “Pluto is most definitely a planet — and should never have been downgraded, say some scientists” (CNN). Or as Clare and the Reasons sang, “Chin up, Pluto.”

Related reading
All OCA Pluto posts (Pinboard)

[When it comes to Pluto, I am a total third-grader.]

Theatre of dreams

W.G. Sebald, The Rings of Saturn, trans. Michael Hulse (New York: New Directions, 1998).

Related reading
All OCA Sebald posts (Pinboard)