Who can it be now?

[From a Mucinex DM commercial. The blur of the banner is there in the original. Click for a larger view.]

I’m sorry, but having seen it, I can’t unsee it: the gob of mucus with the glasses really does look like our president’s Mr. Fix-It, Attorney General William Barr. Please don’t let that get around.

“An important Rubicon”

On CNN today, a talking head referred to “an important Rubicon.” Merriam-Webster:

a bounding or limiting line

especially : one that when crossed commits a person irrevocably

A Rubicon is by definition important. Ask Julius Caesar. Or Austin Dickinson and Mabel Loomis Todd.

Not prolific

The word prolific is all over the news today, in the phrase “most prolific serial killer in U.S. history” and the like. Merriam-Webster’s definitions:

1 : producing young or fruit especially freely : FRUITFUL

2 archaic : causing abundant growth, generation, or reproduction

3 : marked by abundant inventiveness or productivity // a prolific composer

Prolific comes from the French prolifique, which itself goes back to the Latin prōlēs, offspring. The word’s associations with new life and creativity make it a particularly grotesque choice for characterizing a killer. Worst or deadliest is more appropriate. No one should honor a killer as prolific.

Nancy vs. Lucy

Olivia Jaimes on Nancy Ritz and Lucy van Pelt:

Lucy is a more nihilist Nancy. Nancy, for all her complaining, is an optimist with an overpowered sense of self-efficacy. I feel like Lucy wakes up some mornings and thinks “What’s the point?” Nancy thinks that too, but then she remembers that bread exists. I think they would be friends, though maybe they’d prefer just to admire each other’s hustles from a distance.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

Still not smoking

I smoked my last cigarette on October 8, 1989, thirty years ago today. I smoked for fourteen years, trying a wide variety of brands but always going back to unfiltered cigarettes, in packs or handrolled. “Only a modest quantity of unfiltered cigarettes,” to borrow Stanley Dance’s characterization of Duke Ellington’s smoking. Ellington of course died of lung cancer. I wonder where I might now be had I continued smoking.

Cigarettes haunt me, at least mildly. “Mild”: now there’s a cigarette word. “Outstanding — and they are mild” was a slogan for Pall Mall. That was Ellington’s brand. I stopped to stare at a Pall Mall pack in a store display last week, because I still admire the venerable design. Like Camel and Lucky Strike, Pall Mall is increasingly difficult to spot in the wild.

Here’s a bit of my great and unmatched wisdom: if you smoke, quit. You’ll want to quit eventually, and the longer you smoke, the more difficult quitting will be. And for Pete’s sake, don’t vape. There’s no future in being a nicotine addict, or in not being around at all.

And two more cents: we’ve hit a great moment in the annals of American doublethink now that states are banning vaping products until they’re proven safe while cigarettes, which we know cause disease, are sold everywhere.

Related reading
All OCA cigarette posts (Pinboard)

[Stanley Dance: in his The World of Duke Ellington (1969).]

Unfit, unwell

As I have stated strongly before, and just to reiterate, if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (I’ve done before!). They must, with Europe and others, watch over...

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 7, 2019

If he’s doing a Vincent Gigante, that, too, makes him unfit and unwell.

“It’s always the same”

From No Greater Glory (dir. Frank Borzage, 1934). A watchman (Christian Rub) and his janitor friend (Tom Ricketts) watch two gangs of boys fighting. “So much fighting,” the janitor says. “And all over an empty lot.” The watchman, missing one arm, sets his friend straight:

“It ain’t an empty lot. It’s Belgium, Alsace-Lorraine, Manchuria. It’s any war, every war. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow — it’s always the same.”

Pocket notebook sighting

[From The Scarlet Claw (dir. Roy William Neill, 1944). Click for a larger Watson.]

Nigel Bruce as Dr. John H. Watson, writing it down. He can follow directions and work on tasks to completion, or at least until he has had too much to drink.

More notebook sightings
Angels with Dirty Faces : Ball of Fire : The Big Clock : The Brasher Doubloon : Cat People : City Girl : Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne : Dead End : Dragnet : Extras : Eyes in the Night : The Face Behind the Mask : Foreign Correspondent : Fury : Homicide : The Honeymooners : The House on 92nd Street : Journal d’un curé de campagne : Kid Glove Killer : The Last Laugh : Le Million : The Lodger : Ministry of Fear : Mr. Holmes : Murder at the Vanities : Murder by Contract : Murder, Inc. : The Mystery of the Wax Museum : Naked City : The Naked Edge : The Palm Beach Story : Perry Mason : Pickpocket : Pickup on South Street : Pushover : Quai des Orfèvres : The Racket : Railroaded! : Red-Headed Woman : Rififi : La roue : Route 66 : The Small Back Room : The Sopranos : Spellbound : Stage Fright : State Fair : A Stranger in Town : Stranger Things : Time Table : T-Men : 20th Century Women : Union Station : Walk East on Beacon! : Where the Sidewalk Ends : The Woman in the Window : You Only Live Once

Ginger Baker (1939–2019)

The drummer Ginger Baker, best known for his work with Cream and Blind Faith, has died at the age of eighty. From a New York Times obituary:

Mr. Baker, who got his start in jazz combos and cited the likes of Max Roach and Elvin Jones as influences, bristled when the word “rock” was applied to his playing. “I’m a jazz drummer,” he told the British newspaper The Telegraph in 2013. “You have to swing. There are hardly any rock drummers I know who can do that.”

Look, here’s Cream.

The Glenlivet Capsule Collection

From a press release for The Glenlivet Capsule Collection:

The Glenlivet, the original Speyside single malt Scotch, has unveiled a ‘Capsule Collection’ of glassless cocktails that redefine the way whisky is traditionally enjoyed. Launched during London Cocktail Week in partnership with cocktail legend Alex Kratena, the limited-edition The Glenlivet ‘Capsule Collection’ is a range of delicious whisky cocktails served in a seaweed-extract casing, one of nature’s most renewable resources.

A first of its kind for a spirit brand, the edible capsules are 23ml in size, fully biodegradable and provide the perfect flavour-explosion experience. Enjoying them is simple, the capsules are popped in the mouth for an instant burst of flavour, and the capsule is simply swallowed. There is no need for a glass, ice or cocktail stirrer.

Yeesh.

I cannot figure out if the capsule is to be eaten. The press release says that “if discarded,” the capsules biodegrade. I’m not sure which would be worse: eating the casing of a tiny cocktail or removing it from one’s mouth. The promotional video is coy. At any rate, Scotch is to be sipped, not “simply swallowed.”