America, if you’re listening

“I had nothing to do with Russia helping me to get elected.” Russia helped him. He just said so.

And now I think of what Robert Durst said: “There it is. You’re caught.” But Durst had no handlers to step in: “The president’s meaning could not be clearer. He had nothing to do with any effort by anyone,” &c. I’m not quoting handlers, just imagining what they’ll say.

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8:39 a.m.: CNN reports that Trump reversed himself while speaking to reporters: “You know who got me elected? I got me elected. Russia didn’t help me at all. Russia, if anything, I think, helped the other side.”

Streetside supplies

In The Guardian: “Public furniture inspired by office equipment.” Found via Lexikaliker. Thanks, Gunther.

VLC track synchronization

Say that you’ve downloaded an old television clip from YouTube and found that the audio and video are out of sync. In VLC, go to Window and click on Track Synchronization. You can advance or delay the audio track so that things line up — not permanently, but while the clip plays. A difference of two-tenths of a second might be all that you need.

I found this nifty option by searching the VLC Help file for sync.

[To download from YouTube: >4K Video Downloader.]

Mueller speaks!

My translation: I'm done. Congress, it's up to you. Read the report, everyone. Oh, and also: we weren’t allowed to charge him with a crime.

Separated at birth

 
[Claude Akins and Simon Oakland.]

Slywy suggested a separated-at-birth pairing of the actors Claude Akins and Simon Oakland. There’s a strong resemblance, made stronger still by search engines that return pictures of the one in a search for the other. The above pairing is the best I could do. I turned the Akins photo to black and white and cropped an Oakland photo to match.

Also separated at birth
Nicholson Baker and Lawrence Ferlinghetti : Bérénice Bejo and Paula Beer : Ted Berrigan and C. Everett Koop : David Bowie and Karl Held : Victor Buono and Dan Seymour : Ernie Bushmiller and Red Rodney : John Davis Chandler and Steve Buscemi : Ray Collins and Mississippi John Hurt : Broderick Crawford and Vladimir Nabokov : Ted Cruz and Joe McCarthy : Benedict Cumberbatch and Michael Gough : Henry Daniell and Anthony Wiener : Jacques Derrida, Peter Falk, and William Hopper : Charles Grassley and Abraham Jebediah Simpson II : Elaine Hansen (of Davey and Goliath) and Blanche Lincoln : Barbara Hale and Vivien Leigh : Harriet Sansom Harris and Phoebe Nicholls : Steven Isserlis and Pat Metheny : Colonel Wilhelm Klink and Rudy Giuliani : Ton Koopman and Oliver Sacks : Steve Lacy and Myron McCormick : Don Lake and Andrew Tombes : William H. Macy and Michael A. Monahan : Fredric March and Tobey Maguire : Jean Renoir and Steve Wozniak : Molly Ringwald and Victoria Zinny

NYT on Peter Max

Speaking of “the transformation of art into dollars,” The New York Times report on the artist Peter Max is appalling. Dementia and cruise-ship auctions.

Wallace Stevens and beer

Do you have a six-pack of Lagunitas CitruSinensis Pale Ale around the house? Look at the bottom of the carton: the Wallace Stevens poem “The Man with the Blue Guitar” makes an appearance there. Best to remove the bottles before turning the carton over. Or look at this page from the company website.

[CitruSinensis, made with blood-orange juice, tastes mighty good. But a little thin. Not as good as Lagunitas IPA or “The Man with the Blue Guitar.”]

New directions in movie-rental signage

The local Family Video, which now sells CBD, is pushing harder. On the signboard today:

HAVE YOU TRIED
       + CBD?
 IT’S THE BALM!

That green cross makes a vaguely medical promise — and reminds me that I live in a place where too many people lack adequate access to affordable health care. It’s not a good thing for a movie-rental outlet to be encouraging self-medication with an unregulated and relatively untested substance.

And where did the local Family Video get a green plus-sign? Is this slogan in national use?

Things I learned on my summer vacation

“I have two wolves in my heart. One is loving, and one is vicious, and they’re at war with each other. The grandchild is saying, Which is going to win? And the grandparent is saying, The one I feed.” [Source.]

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Rihanna has a fashion line.

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“Meat Detour Ahead.”

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“Ponding Water Possible.”

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They don’t make children’s wagons they way they used to. Today’s wagons have creature comforts.

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Gravity Hill, Pennsylvania: “Cars roll uphill and water flows the wrong way.” Uh-huh.

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“New England is only in New England.”

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Garden State Plaza in Paramus, New Jersey, is at some points the cross-country twin of the Westfield Topanga mall in Canoga Park, California. Compare the mall entrances alongside GSP’s Ruby Tuesday and WT’s Cheesecake Factory. What explains this magic? Westfield.

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My mom and I always choose crab cakes. But I knew that already. (Legal Sea Foods FTW.)

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Chock Full o’Nuts was—once again—on sale at Shop-Rite. Twelve cans to bring back to a world devoid o’Nuts.

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In the Port Authority Bus Terminal, I did not learn what the man with his midsection pressed to the Dyson hand dryer was doing. Nor did I want to.

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A glance at Joan Miró’s object assemblages — Object, for instance — is enough to see that Miró must have influenced Joseph Cornell.

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So many of the paintings at MoMA appear to have dated in ways that far older works have not. I thought of what Emerson said of Plato: “This perpetual modernness is the measure of merit, in every work of art.” Some modern art is no longer so modern. Miró is.

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The motion-activated Dyson Airblades in MoMA’s men’s bathrooms are a mess. Water comes from a middle spout. To the right and left, hand dryers. Position your wet hand the wrong way and the dryer sprays water droplets up toward your arm and face. Move your hand too far to the right while drying and a motion-activated soap dispenser kicks in. I was quick enough to dodge the soap that would have dropped onto my shirtsleeve. How can a museum with an exhibit of objects that embody good design have such lousy fixtures in its men’s bathrooms? Elaine reported no such fixtures in the women’s bathrooms.

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One set of MoMA bathrooms adds “Self-Identified” to the placards MEN and WOMEN.

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There’s a guard at the Museum of Modern Art who sharpens his pencil with a handheld sharpener while standing guard.

*

It’s possible in MoMA to have a long, wide-ranging, exceptionally pleasant conversation, about everything from rents to design to the influence of weather on museum attendance, with — was he a docent or a guard? I don’t want to get anyone in trouble, so that’s all I’ll say.

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From 1943 to 1947, the Council on Books in Wartime produced Armed Forces Editions, inexpensive paperbacks for distribution to the troops. Among the titles: Great Poems from Chaucer to Whitman (ed. Louis Untermeyer) and A Wartime Whitman (ed. William A. Aiken). In other words, Whitman was a quintessential American poet.

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The Marcal Paper factory in Elmwood Park, New Jersey, burned to the ground earlier this year. The factory’s rooftop sign was a beautiful sight from Route 80.

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American Heroes Smokehouse is a barbecue restaurant with a great backstory. And great food. I wrote a review and said that we ate like happy maniacs. Elaine wrote a review, without reading mine, and said that we ate like raving lunatics. Thank you, Lu and Jim.

*


[Mark Trail, May 14, 2019.]

Not me.

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Phebe’s Tavern and Grill has been in business on the Bowery since 1968, before the days of salmon burgers and quinoa salads. The building dates to 1920. Good food, modest prices, the plain wooden floor of an old establishment.

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The Bowery is quite different from my mental image of it, formed from Weegee photographs and the great movie On the Bowery (dir. Lionel Rogosin, 1956). In front of the Bowery Mission, three doddering men looked woefully out of place.

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I was happy to see Joe Brainard’s work at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery, but found little difference between seeing the drawings, paintings, and collages themselves and seeing reproductions in books. Is that good, or bad? Beats me. But I love the wit, cheer, and modesty of Brainard’s work.


[Joe Brainard, 30 Squares. 1975. 13 1/2″ × 10 1/2″. Photograph by Michael Leddy. Click for a larger view.]

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What I don’t love: hearing up close the transformation of art into dollars. “Thirty”? That means $30,000. Do those who have come to a gallery only to look typically feel invisible?

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Route 9 is a Massachusetts version of New Jersey’s Route 46.

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J&M Diner in Framingham, Massachusetts, is diner heaven. Breakfast food only, served for breakfast and lunch. I chose bacon and eggs. Elaine chose the sweet potato hash. We both chose well.

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Ben is a wonderful host. But I knew that already.


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Ben’s work is more interesting than I knew.

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The Frank Pepe’s in Chestnut Hill is a superior Frank Pepe’s. (Quality varies greatly from location to location.) The oven at Frank Pepe’s is about the only use of coal I will defend. White clam, quattro formaggi, and spinach, mushroom, and gorgonzola: bliss.

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Naco Taco is a food truck that sits all day, seven days a week, on Boston’s Newbury Street. A torta ahogada cut into four pieces makes a nice little prelude to dinner.

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Glen Baxter has been translated into Spanish: Casi todo Baxter: Nuevas y escogidas ocurrencias.

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A thoughtful library touch, posted in the bathrooms: a page of call numbers for “sensitive subjects.” “We’re always here to help,” says the page, “but sometimes it’s hard to ask. We hope this sign will help you find what you need.” Yes, we go to the library while on vacation.

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Why did Elaine and I never think of going to Sol Azteca? Guacamole, nopalitos (cactus), mole poblano, puerco en adobo, and chicken tostadas.

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Triumphalism aside, the monologue “Growing Up Italian” is startling in its accuracy. Fig tree: my mom recalls one. “Watching the house”: that was my grandparents’ thing. The holiday menu, ending with fruit and nuts: exactly. We heard this unidentified recording on Festa Italiana, from Gannon University’s WERG FM.

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Somewhere in Ohio lives a Bentley owner with the license plate G POUPON.

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Talia knows the cadences of the alphabet song. Bah bah, bah bah, bah bah bah.

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2261.8 miles : 49.7 MPG (lots of wind) : 53 MPH.

More things I learned on my summer vacation
2018 : 2017 : 2016 : 2015 : 2014 : 2013 : 2012 : 2011 : 2010 : 2009 : 2008 : 2007 : 2006

Hi and Lois watch

[Hi and Lois, May 27, 2019.]

The Flagstons have now had two cookouts in two days. That’s odd.

Lois’s willingness to placate this “neighbor”? That’s odd. A better reply: “Sorry, but today it’s for our family only,” followed by a weak smile.

Not so odd, considering how things sometimes go in this strip: Hi and his grill have traded places in the interstice. In the second panel the grill should be to Hi’s left.

The Flagstons’ tree, frustrated by recent developments in this strip, has chosen not to appear in the second panel. The tree is hiding, for now, in the interstice.

I now imagine Ditto at the family table: “Mom, Dad, I found him in our tree fort the other day.”

Related reading
All OCA Hi and Lois posts (Pinboard)

[Three Hi and Lois posts in three days? Yes, but I thought it’d be irresponsible not to make this post.]