Louis Armstrong, digitized

Writings, recordings, artifacts, now available in digital form at the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Queens. The New York Times offers a lengthy look.

Related reading
All OCA Armstrong posts (Pinboard)

[Found via Matt Thomas’s latest Sunday Times digest.]

Nancy & Sluggo, Nancy & Sluggo

[Zippy, November 20, 2018. Click for a larger view.]

The banner text reads, “In a contest between Nancy & Sluggo, back Nancy & Sluggo.” Notice the noses: Nancy, Sluggo, Sluggo, Nancy. Again and again, Bill Griffith honors comic-strip elders, even if they are eight-year-olds.

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

Two comments

A reader left a comment last night on a recent post, Patriotism vs. nationalism. The post quoted Emmanuel Macron’s distinction between the terms:

Le patriotisme est l’exact contraire du nationalisme : le nationalisme en est la trahison. En disant « nos intérêts d’abord et qu’importent les autres ! », on gomme ce qu’une Nation a de plus précieux, ce qui la fait vivre : ses valeurs morales.

[Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism. Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism. By putting our own interests first, with no regard for others, we erase the very thing that a nation holds dearest, and the thing that keeps it alive: its moral values.]

The comment read:

Boy I long for the days when the NYT brandished Reagan for calling the Soviet Union/Russia an Evil Empire.

I was curious to see what the Times had to say about “evil empire,” so I looked, and wrote a comment in reply. And got shut out of my own blog: “Your HTML cannot be accepted: Must be at most 4,096 characters.” That’s cold, Google, but understandable. Here’s my reply to the commenter:

Your comment made me curious enough to look in the Times Archive for context. Reagan used that phrase in a speech to the National Association of Evangelicals. Though he acknowledged an American “legacy of evil,” he presented the international situation as a Manichaean struggle between good and evil. And you know of course which side was which. A specific context for the speech: proposals for a nuclear-weapons freeze.

I can’t find a Times editorial about the phrase. But here’s an excerpt from a Tom Wicker column (March 15, 1983):

Most of what I know about the Soviet regime I find repellent. But if the President of the United States proclaims to the world the view that this country’s relationship with the Soviet Union is a death struggle with Evil, then his own words inevitably suggest that there can be no real compromise with that Evil — not on arms control or anything else. Knowing that, why should those proclaimed as “the focus of evil” believe in the possibility of real compromise with a U.S. dedicated to their destruction? The holy war mentality on either side tends to evoke it on the other; and holy wars are both the hardest to avoid and the least likely to be settled short of one side's annihilation.

The question for Wicker was not whether the Soviet Union was a rotten system but whether the language of “evil empire” was the best way to deal with that system. In another column (September 30, 1983), Wicker asked,

Has Ronald Reagan’s management of foreign affairs, compared with that of his predecessors, reduced or heightened Soviet-American animosities? If the latter, for what purpose? Are we more secure, for example, for his having personally labeled Moscow's an “evil empire”?

That was not long after the Soviet Union shot down a South Korean passenger plane that had strayed into Soviet territory.

Two other items. One, a brief editorial comment commending a decision to return to the Soviet Union a sixteen-year-old who had asked to stay in the United States:

The Reagan Administration is not famous for its sensitivity concerning the Russians. We have it on Highest Authority, for example, that the Soviet Union is an “evil empire.'”

But the Times also wrote:

The Soviet Union remains a country that people are eager to flee, America a country people struggle to enter.

You’ll have to read further to see why the Times approved of returning the young man to the Soviet Union.

And on the same day, Russell Baker wrote about Reagan’s choices of words to suit his audiences:

He knows precisely when to make a sound like “evil empire” rather than “Soviet Union.” It is a sound that delights churchly fundamentalists. Mr. Reagan did not hesitate to make it for them in Florida during the spring. It was not a sound calculated to please American farmers, though. And so, when the time came to worry about the farm vote a few weeks back, the sound emanating from Mr. Reagan was not “evil empire” but “market.” Having uttered the correct sound, he approved record grain shipments from American farmers to — no, not the “evil empire” but the Soviet “market.” Here was a remarkable piece of retuning your instrument to the acoustics of the auditorium. A less skillful musician would have made an insufferable sound about “being nice to the evil empire,” and American farmers would have howled. American farmers don’t want to be any nicer to the “evil empire” than churchly fundamentalists do. All they want is a profitable market.

The question raised by these incidents is whether anybody cares anymore what is being said, as long as the correct sounds are being made.

I care what’s being said, always, and I think Wicker’s question is important: are we safer for language like “evil empire,” “axis of evil,” “little rocket man,” and so on, or not? The larger question, what the post was about: whether nationalism is a strategy for a better world.

[I searched the Times from March to November 1983.]

Twelve movies

[All available from the soon-to-be defunct FilmStruck. One to four stars. Three sentences each. No spoilers.]

Jacques Tourneur

I Walked with a Zombie (1943). Much more stylish and thoughtful than its title might suggest. A tropical version of Jane Eyre, with a nurse-newcomer, a mysterious tower, a love triangle that becomes a rectangle, zombies, white and black, and beautiful cinematography (by J. Roy Hunt, otherwise unknown to me), . The history of colonialism and enslavement is frankly prominent in this unusual film. ★★★★

The Leopard Man (1943). Tourneur’s Cat People gave me high hopes for this film, which begins on a strong note. Why is that woman screaming, and what’s on the other side of that underpass? But the film doesn’t sustain the interest its opening scenes invite. ★★

Berlin Express (1948). Robert Ryan and Merle Oberon would be considered the stars here, but this film is full of fine performances. The premise: in post-WWII Berlin, an international amateur effort takes up the search for a missing diplomat. Suspense, surprises, and a heavy infusion of Hitchcock. ★★★★

*

Le Main du diable (dir. Maurice Tourneur, 1943). Jacques’s father directed this film, a playful (too playful?) cautionary tale of an unsuccessful painter and the talisman that brings him love and fame. He has to get rid of the talisman before dying — but how? And who is that little man wearing a derby? ★★★

*

Jean Vigo

À propos de Nice (1930). A short silent panorama of a city: streetsweepers, café-goers, boulevardiers, bocce and tennis players, poor kids at street games, a parade, a statue with water pooling in its crotch. I admit it: Vigo’s political motive (revolution!) is lost on me. The camera, wherever it is aimed, seems in love with humanity — and statuary. ★★★★

Taris (1931). A portrait of Jean Taris, master swimmer. A how-to film of sorts, with Taris demonstrating different strokes. But there’s also play: fast-motion, slow-motion, reverse-motion, and the swimmer lounging at the bottom of the pool. ★★★★

Zéro de conduite (1933). Recommended in a New York Times article about FilmStruck, this is the film that started our household on Vigo. The battle of order and anarchy at a school for boys. You can guess which side wins. ★★★

L’Atalante (1934). This one is Vigo’s masterpiece: a sweet, incongruous love story, with newlyweds beginning their life together on L’Atalante, the barge the husband helms. Along for the ride are the gruff, heavily tattooed first mate (with his own wunderkammer) and an accordion-playing cabin boy. Maurice Jaubert’s music is a beautiful addition to this luminous film. ★★★★

*

Deux hommes dans Manhattan (dir. Jean-Pierre Melville, 1959). A journalist (Melville) and his dissolute photographer friend (Pierre Grasset) travel the city in search of a missing diplomat. Melville’s film seems as much about Manhattan as about storytelling: again and again, we get to see mid-century urban realities, in black and white, thank goodness. Neon, sidewalks, a diner, a subway: the camera lingers over them all. ★★★★

*

Tiger Bay (dir. J. Lee Thompson, 1959). In Cardiff, Wales, a Polish sailor (Horst Buchholz) commits a crime of passion and strikes up a friendship with the sole witness to the crime, a young girl (Hayley Mills) living in the same apartment building. A story of loyalty and betrayal, which leaves the viewer torn between siding with a killer and the law. Remarkable to see the pre-Disney Hayley Mills: she was a serious actor. ★★★★

*

Obsession (dir. Edward Dymytrk, 1949). The premise: a doctor (Robert Newton) who suspects his wife (Sally Gray) of serial infidelities takes slow-motion revenge on her latest partner (Phil Brown). The manner of revenge, though ghastly, is presented with a considerable element of comedy. The movie’s secret sauce: Naunton Wayne as a police superintendent who seems another precursor of Lieutenant Columbo, showing up in the most unexpected ways with another point to check, another question to ask. ★★★★

*

The Body Snatcher (dir. Robert Wise, 1945). From a Robert Louis Stevenson story, with Boris Karloff starring as a cab driver and “resurrection man,” furnishing bodies to a doctor (Henry Daniell) for dissection. Top-of-the-line horror, with a vaguely homoerotic subtext in the secret bond between driver and doctor: “You’ll never get rid of me, Toddy.” My favorite moment: the young street singer walking off into darkness, followed by a cab. ★★★★

FilmStruck shuts down on November 29. Goodbye, FilmStruck.

Related reading
All OCA film posts (Pinboard)

[Our household’s FilmStruck subscription is ending on a Val Lewton note: Lewton produced I Walked with a Zombie, The Leopard Man, and The Body Snatcher.]

EXchange names on screen: BArclay

[Deux hommes dans Manhattan (dir. Jean-Pierre Melville, 1959). Click for a larger card.]

More EXchange names on screen
Act of Violence : 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 : Stage Fright : Sweet Smell of Success : Tension : This Gun for Hire

Brian Wilson 2018

Daniel Durchholz, writing in the St. Louis Post -Dispatch about a Brian Wilson performance this past Thursday in St. Charles, Missouri:

Throughout most of the show, Wilson sat at his piano, staring blankly and sometimes running a hand across his forehead. Occasionally he played and sang a lyric. But often he missed his cues, mumbled or sang off key. It was sometimes hard to watch.

I recall the use of Auto-Tune during the Beach Boys’ 2012 fiftieth-anniversary reunion tour. Now it seems there’s no need. It’s all unspeakably sad.

Here are four recent performances of “Good Vibrations,” from November 9, 13, 15, and 16. Future performances: November 21, 22, 23, 25, 28, 30; December 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 27, 20, 21, 22, and 23.

I’m grateful to have seen Brian on the Pet Sounds and SMiLE tours (2000, 2004). That’s how I’d like to think of him on a stage — engaged with the music.

Related reading
All OCA Brian Wilson posts (Pinboard)

P Is for Pterodactyl

Good clean fun for the nerdish young: P Is for Pterodactyl: The Worst Alphabet Book Ever, by Raj Haldar and Chris Carpenter, with illustrations by Maria Tina Beddia.

Thanks, Rachel.

[Pterodactyl: “genus of reptiles, from Greek pteron wing + daktylos finger.” And why is the dactyl a metrical foot? Because it resembles the structure of a finger, whose three bones suggest the three syllables: long, short, short. The Greek daktylos is itself a dactyl: — ᴗ ᴗ. In poetic meter in English, the dactyl is a matter of stress, not length. The word poetry is a dactyl. POetry: / x x.]

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Matthew Sewell, is a tough one, particularly in the center-west and south-west. 26-Down, ten letters, “Take your time” was the clue that finally (finally) let me work out six or seven other missing answers. And then there was 54-Across, three letters, “Application placeholder.” What? I got that one on a first guess and had to look it up to understand what I had typed.

My favorite clues in today’s puzzle: 5-Down, twelve letters, “I asked for so little!” and 25-Down, four letters, “Theatregoer, quite possibly.” Fiendish, that clue. No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.

I’m not sure what’s happening to the Newsday crossword. A paywall now rules the site, with a digital subscription costing $3.49 a week, but an adblocker should make the puzzle playable for non-subscribers. The puzzle is also available at BrainsOnly. I hope that Newsday, like The New York Times, will offer a crossword-only subscription. That’d be appropriate for solvers with no particular ties to Long Island.

“Why not ghosts”

Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon (1977).

I like this element of meta-commentary as Milkman tries to think things through: one element of the fantastic in this novel makes another plausible.

A related post
“Hi” vs. “hello”

[Yes, Pilate Dead, Milkman’s aunt, was born without a navel. And yes, some people are born without one. But we’re not meant to think of a medical explanation when reading Song of Solomon.]

“Hi” vs. “hello”

Milkman Dead is paying a rare visit to Pilate Dead, his aunt. His friend Guitar Bains is with him. Pilate is peeling an orange.


Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon (1977).

Pilate then instructs the young men: “You say ‘Hi’ to pigs and sheep when you want ’em to move. When you tell a human being ‘Hi,’ he ought to get up and knock you down.” The Oxford English Dictionary defines hi as “an exclamation used to call attention.” Nothing about animals, but there is this citation from 1847: “‘Hi!’ cried the brigand, giving the mule a bang with the butt-end of his musket. ‘Hi!’”