Not just a white Christmas

The times are changing: Hallmark premieres four movies this holiday season with African-American male and female leads, the first such movies in Hallmark history. The movies themselves appear to be the same old same old: Christmas galas and festivals, a gingerbread contest, a historic-preservation battle, a return to a childhood home. But now with leads of color.

Two of these movies, Christmas Everlasting and A Majestic Christmas, air tonight. Memories of Christmas airs on Saturday the 8th; A Gingerbread Romance, on Sunday the 17th. Check, as they say, your local listings.

Italic frenemy

Nancy’s friend Esther has a frenemy: “Esther, it’s so nice to see you.”


[Nancy, December 6, 2018.]

I am cheered to know that at least one cartoon character is alert enough to notice and comment snarkily on typography. But hold up: what about Nancy’s own words in boldface? Well, boldface has always been available in Nancy, old and new, available for everyone to use. I assume that for Nancy, boldface is just the way things have always worked. Nothing to see there.

Olivia Jaimes’s tricky meta-comedy is a delight. Jaimes and Bill Griffith rule my small comic-strip world.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

Clara

Arthur Schnitzler, “Baron von Leisenberg’s Destiny.” 1904. In “Night Games” and Other Stories and Novellas, trans. Margret Schaefer (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002).

Other Schnitzler posts
“Maestro!” : A morning after

Whither the Usage Panel?

David Skinner traces the evolution of the American Heritage Dictionary: “The Dictionary and Us” (The Weekly Standard). The impetus for the article: the quiet, very quiet disbanding of the famed AHD Usage Panel (yes, capitalized) this past February. According to Skinner, the panel never had more than “a very modest role” in the making of the AHD.

Related reading
All OCA dictionary posts (Pinboard)
A review of The Story of Ain’t, Skinner’s history of Webster’s Third

[“Quiet, very quiet”: so quiet that I can’t find anything about it online, not even at the Dictionary Society of North America. The AHD website still lists Usage Panel members. But Skinner himself was a member, so he would know if the panel has been disbanded.]

Lines

Just a few of the redacted lines in the addendum to Robert Mueller’s sentencing recommendation re: Michael Flynn. Flynn is described as assisting in “several ongoing investigations.” As little Talia would say, “Uh-oh!”

You can read the memo and the addendum at Axios.

New directions

A Hallmark movie has quoted “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”: the line about measuring out life with coffee spoons. Yes, someone runs a café. And the reply: “You’re an Eliot fan too?” OMG they’re made for each other.

[The movie is Love Always, Santa (dir. Brian Herzlinger, 2016). I’ve been misremembering the Eliot line as “in coffee spoons” for, like, forever. OMG.]

My mom is a smart person

I told my mom about the podcast series Elaine and I were listening to, UnErased: The History of Conversion Therapy in America. “What’s conversion therapy?” my mom asked. She’d never heard of it. I gave her a brief explanation. “That’s crazy!” she said.

g-20.in

Rudolph Giuliani tweeted and forgot to proofread. So now there’s a website: g-20.in.

Mornings after

It’s early morning. Lieutenant Wilhelm Kasda is traveling back to his barracks after a disastrous night of gambling:


Arthur Schnitzler, “Night Games.” 1926. In “Night Games” and Other Stories and Novellas, trans. Margret Schaefer (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002).

When I read these sentences, I immediately thought of this autobiographical passage from Thomas Merton, recounting the typical aftermath of a night on Manhattan’s 52nd Street:


Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain (New York: Harcourt, Brace: 1948).

Related reading
A passage from Schnitzler’s Late Fame
All OCA Thomas Merton posts (Pinboard)

[There’s relatively little of Schnitzler available in print in translation. I wonder if he’s due for a Stefan Zweig-like revival. But Eyes Wide Shut will not have helped.]

UnErased

“Over 700,000 people in America have been subjected to conversion therapy, the dangerous and controversial ex-gay treatment. UnErased tells their stories”: it’s a four-part podcast series, UnErased: The History of Conversion Therapy in America.

I’m halfway through the third episode, and the subject matter has ranged from the Book of Job to Playboy. UnErased is one of the best podcast series I’ve listened to: deeply researched and urgently human.