Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Brad Wilber, is a breeze — a welcome breeze, given that the temperature today is supposed to get to 86°.

Three clues I especially liked: 64-Across, three letters, “Verb with preposition and noun homophones.” 66-Across, seven letters, “System conveying blog updates.” And 11-Down, seven letters: “What was once called a ‘fountain paintbrush.’” Words. Blogs. Supplies. Represent.

No spoilers; the answers and some additional commentary are in the comments.

What Susan Collins didn’t talk about

The White House’s limits on the FBI investigation, the many potential witnesses never interviewed (there’s no possibility of corroboration without a genuine investigation), Deborah Ramirez’s allegation (for which there are contemporaneous witnesses), Brett Kavanaugh’s defensiveness and evasiveness in responding to senators’ questions, his blatant dishonesty under oath, the many doubts about his ability to be an impartial and even-tempered justice. See, for instance, American Bar Association misgivings, a letter signed by 2,400+ law professors, and former justice John Paul Stevens’s remarks.

I am trying to imagine a job candidate — for any job, anywhere — conducting herself or himself as Kavanaugh did in last Thursday’s hearing and then being hired. I can’t. Shame on Susan Collins, Jeff Flake, Joe Manchin, and the rest. Now it’s really the Twilight Zone.

Geoff Emerick (1945-2018)

The recording engineer Geoff Emerick, best known for his work with the Beatles, has died at the age of seventy-two. The New York Times has an obituary.

Here’s Emerick looking back on the 1963 Beatles Christmas Show:

When I got home that night I reflected on the fact that only a year and a half previously I had still been in school, desperate to get into the recording business. Now here I was, on a first-name basis with the four musicians who had appeared on that stage; I’d been a guest of their manager, sitting in a choice seat because I had actually played a small role in the making of their records. It was quite a sobering moment; so much had happened in that year and a half. As 1963 slipped into 1964, I pinched myself at my good fortune.

How much better can this possibly get? I asked myself.

Geoff Emerick and Howard Massey, Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles (New York: Penguin, 2006).

Scene from an Eye-talian restaurant

The waitstaff had been trained into robotic uniformity:

“What would you like, ma’am?”

“. . .”

“Yes, ma’am. And what would you like, sir?”

“. . .”

“Yes, sir. And what would you like, ma’am?”

And so on. The crack in the facade appeared when someone asked about salad dressing.

“We have Eye-talian, French,” &c.

The owners had thought of almost everything.

“Eye-talian” is a common midwestern pronunciation. Maybe that’s how the owners pronounce it too.

Balzac: money

Honoré de Balzac, Cousin Bette, trans. Kathleen Raine (New York: Modern Library, 2002).

Related reading
All OCA Balzac posts (Pinboard)

“Plaid”

Fun: “Plaid,” an episode of Articles of Interest, a podcast series within in the podcast series 99% Invisible.

I like plaid. (It really is warmer.) And I was happy to learn from this podcast that tartan generators a-plenty may be found online. I used Tartan Designer to make an official Orange Crate Art tartan (Orange Crate tArtan?). If American Express and New Jersey can have their own tartans, so can my blog:


Related posts
Is plaid really warmer? : Phil Silvers in plaid : Proust and plaid : Winter weather wisdom (“Cover most of your body in plaid”)

John Ashbery’s collages

On view now in New York.

Related reading
All OCA Ashbery posts (Pinboard)

[The “man in a suit” in the collage Cushing’s Island — isn’t that Jerry Lewis?]

Photographs by Joanna Key

Photographs by my friend Joanna Key, appearing in Midwestern Gothic: an abandoned bus, doors, a goat, pumpkin heads, a shark, a water tower, the whole world in his hand.

Down a garden path

A garden-path sentence in the form of a New York Daily News headline: “Father of off-duty cop busted for hiring hooker who stole his car and gun explodes after hearing the details.”

[The cop was busted, not the father. The father exploded, not the gun.]

Numbers

Four senators:

Susan Collins (R-ME)
Washington, D.C.: 202-224-2523
Augusta: 207-622-8414
Bangor: 207-945-0417
Biddeford: 207-283-1101
Caribou: 207-493-7873
Lewiston: 207-784-6969
Portland: 207-780-3575

Jeff Flake (R-AZ)
Washington, D.C. 202-224-4521
Phoenix: 602-840-1891
Tucson: 520-575-8633

Joe Manchin (D-WV)
Washington, D.C.: 202-224-3954
Charleston: 304-342-5855
Eastern Panhandle: 304-264-4626
Fairmont: 304-368-0567

Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)
Washington, D.C.: 202-224-6665
Anchorage: 907-271-3735
Fairbanks: 907-456-0233
Juneau: 907-586-7277
Kenai: 907-283-5808
Ketchikan: 907-225-6880
Mat-Su Valley: 907-376-7665

Every time I make these calls, I feel that it’s useless. But still, I call. And if hundreds of thousands — or millions? — of people call? That might be far from useless.

Pro tip: calling a local office is a good way to avoid the D.C. “mailbox full” response. When I called one of Senator Manchin’s local offices, I startled upon realizing that I had reached a person, not another answering machine. I identified myself as an Illinois voter, as I always do: I’d never try to pass for a constituent. And I even took an extra few seconds to praise the West Virginia Welcome Center on Interstate 64 West. Why not?

[Telephone numbers from Contacting Congress.]