Domestic comedy

[Media studies.]

“He looks sort of like a demented Robert Young.”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

[He: James Griffith, in the Perry Mason episode “The Case of the Posthumous Painter” (November 11, 1961).]

“We did not plummet into space”

A clue in a Newsday crossword got me thinking about plummet. Which in turn made me think of Ernest Noyes Brookings (1898–1987). Brookings, a Navy veteran and a designer of machine parts, began writing poems while residing in a nursing home. A book of his poems was published in an edition of 400 copies: We Did Not Plummet Into Space: Variety Poems of Special Interest (Charlestown, MA: Innerer Klang, 1983). It’s a book I cherish.

Brookings’s poems are sweet and startling, with lines and stanzas often moving in whatever directions the poet’s rhyming dictionary suggests. Content as an extension of form: radical formalism, says I. Here are the final stanzas of “My Jobs”:



[A number of musicians have set Brookings’s poems to music. A collected poems, Golden Rule, was published in 2016 (London: Boatwhistle Books).]

May Drug Co.

[Zippy, February 26, 2019.]

In today’s Zippy, a dead drugstore comes back to life. The May Drug Co. stood at Seminary Avenue and Foothill Boulevard in Oakland, California. Here’s a photo gallery, assembled by the artist Gary Molitor, whose father and grandfather ran May Drug.

I like retail density, real or imaginary.

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard) : A Berenice Abott photograph : Best drugstore in the movies?

“Nearly everyone was”

Steve Hagen is trying to figure something out:


Kenneth Fearing, The Big Clock. 1946. (New York: New York Review Books, 2006).

The movie (dir. John Farrow, 1948) is fun, but the novel is the real film noir.

Also from this novel
“The niece of a department store” : “Me? Dangerous?”

A joke in the traditional manner

This one’s from Elaine:

What’s the name of the Illinois town where dentists want to live?

No spoilers. The punchline is in the comments.

More jokes in the traditional manner
The Autobahn : Did you hear about the cow coloratura? : Did you hear about the thieving produce clerk? : Elementary school : A Golden Retriever : How did Bela Lugosi know what to expect? : How did Samuel Clemens do all his long-distance traveling? : How do amoebas communicate? : How do worms get to the supermarket? : Of all the songs in the Great American Songbook, which is the favorite of pirates? : What did the doctor tell his forgetful patient to do? : What did the plumber do when embarrassed? : What happens when a senior citizen visits a podiatrist? : What is the favorite toy of philosophers’ children? : What was the shepherd doing in the garden? : Where do amoebas golf? : Where does Paul Drake keep his hot tips? : Which member of the orchestra was best at handling money? : Why did the doctor spend his time helping injured squirrels? : Why did Oliver Hardy attempt a solo career in movies? : Why did the ophthalmologist and his wife split up? : Why does Marie Kondo never win at poker? : Why is the Fonz so cool? : Why was Santa Claus wandering the East Side of Manhattan?

[“In the traditional manner”: by or à la my dad. He gets credit for all but the cow coloratura, the produce clerk, the amoebas, the worms, the pirate song, the toy, the shepherd, Paul Drake, the squirrel-doctor, Marie Kondo, the Fonz, Santa Claus, and this one. My dad was making such jokes long before anyone called them “dad jokes.”]

“Me? Dangerous?”

George Stroud again. The beautiful stranger, who is no stranger, really, is Pauline Delos.


Kenneth Fearing, The Big Clock. 1946. (New York: New York Review Books, 2006).

Also from this novel
“The niece of a department store”

Library history

“Today, even in an America that increasingly shuns all things public, people still love and need a good public library”: Ariel Aberg-Riger offers a short illustrated history of the American public library.

[Found via Fresca, l’astronave.]

No, it’s not a butter churn

At Oscar’s Day, George Bodmer dramatizes a supply-centric generation gap.

Stanley Donen (1924–2019)

Director of Royal Wedding and Funny Face and so many other films, co-director of On the Town and Singin’ in the Rain, Stanley Donen has died at the age of ninety-four. The New York Times has an obituary.

Our fambly was fortunate to see Stanley Donen with John Williams and the Boston Pops at Tanglewood some years ago. Donen introduced clips from his films, which played silently on a huge screen as the orchestra played the appropriate part of the score. We must have been at this 2005 concert, which also featured Josh Groban. I remember that there were many younger (and noisy) people in the audience.

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Matthew Sewell, has some fine pairs of clues and answers. Or at least fine by me:

31-Across, nine letters, “Dove.” You were thinking of birds, perhaps?

56-Across, ten letters, “They have defensive ends.”

11-Down, ten letters, “Bridge beam.” Thank you, Vertigo, for that answer.

13-Down, five letters, “Minor key.”

No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.