Walter Mercado (1932?–2019)

“For years, he kept Latino families glued to their televisions as he dramatically revealed their futures, as foretold by the stars”: Walter Mercado, celebrity astrologer, has died in his late eighties. The New York Times has an obituary.

I’d describe Walter Mercado as something of a cross between Liberace and Fulton Sheen. Regalia and piercing eyes. Forty or more years ago, Mercado was a fixture on New York’s WNJU, channel 47. Yes, channel 47, in the days of UHF television. Flipping channels in a motel room a few years ago, I was startled to see Mercado still doing his thing on Univision.

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En mi casa toman Bustelo (Coffee and UHF)

Another delegitimatize

In Mississippi on Friday, Donald Trump stumbled onto the word delegitimatize, which appears in neither Merriam-Webster nor the Oxford English Dictionary, each of which has entries for legtimatize and delegitimize.

So what did I see last night in the November 4 New Yorker, in a Jelani Cobb commentary on Trump?

Observers pointed to the recklessness of his words and to the ways in which delegitimatizing the system might eventually culminate in unrest.

There’s no joke in Cobb’s use of delegitimatize: the magazine arrived in my mailbox before Trump’s Mississippi performance. The thought of Trump and The New Yorker being on the same page usage-wise is, as a wishy-washy observer of politics might say, “troubling.”

Google’s Ngram Viewer shows delegitimize far outpacing delegitimatize in 2008 (the most recent data). The ratio is 90:1. It seems fair to consider delegitimatize as, at best, a needlessly prolix variant, like, say, advisatory for advisory. Donald Trump wouldn’t care. But The New Yorker should.

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New “words”

TMH

[Hi and Lois, November 2, 2019. Click for a larger view.]

I debated whether to post this panel. Elaine’s response — “What is that?” — made the decision easy. That is a colorist’s oversight, turning pajamas into flesh. Too little green and TMH — Too Much Hi. Or else Hi has had his pajama pattern tattooed onto his pasty midsection. And in that case, too, Too Much Hi.

*

I’ve added a close-up below. You can click on it for a larger, better (?) view.

*

Skepticism about the patch abounds in the comments. So I’ve made a fleshy revision. If that patch is supposed to be Hi, I think his pajamas are riding way too low. TML: Too Much Low. But the crossed lines still say to me TMH.


[My revision. Click for a larger view.]

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All OCA Hi and Lois posts (Pinboard)

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper is by Lester Ruff. Les Ruff: so a cinch, a breeze, a picnic. Duck soup, if you will. A walk in the park, straight to a picnic table where they’re serving duck soup and pieces of cake. Cake made with a Kenner Easy-Bake Oven. It was an easy Saturday.

The puzzle’s pleasures arrived in the form of novel clues and answers — novel, at least, to me. 1-A, nine letters, “Public mention.” 14-D, nine letters, “What home offices might have.” 17-A, nine letters, “What ‘the hoi polloi’ actually is.” 31-D, nine letters, “‘Enterprise’ reckonings.” And especially 13-D, nine letters, “General Pencil product.”

No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.

New “words”

Foistered, delegitimitize, apprenti. But I’d spell the middle one delegitimatize.

Apprenti : like alumni ? Come to think of it, The Apprentus would the perfect name for a series about a victim of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

“Something there is,” &c.

As the poet said, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” It’s called a reciprocating saw.

Patience, Fortitude, and feet

Patience and Fortitude are back. And the happy foot/sad foot sign has a home.

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Foot Clinic sign

The Art Theater

The Art Theater (“Art-house cinema in central IL”) has closed for keeps. I wrote this short description in a 2012 post:

The Art offers intelligent programming, atypical and well-priced snacks and drinks, appropriate pre-movie music, minimal advertising, and a terrific sound system. There’s one screen, and the audience comes to pay attention: what a difference that makes.

That description held to the end. The clearest sign of difficulty: movies often became available on DVD from Netflix just a few weeks after the Art had them. In other words, the theater was getting movies at the very end of their run.

My most vivid memories of the Art Theater: Moonlight, RBG, Coffee and Cigarettes, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? (tears and sniffles everywhere), Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe, and Fahrenheit 9/11, the only movie I’ve ever seen in a sold-out theater.

Goodbye, Art Theater. Thanks for the movies.

“Somewhere in time”

With Fonny in prison, Tish says that the word time “tolled like the bells of a church.”


James Baldwin, If Beale Street Could Talk (1974).

Also from James Baldwin
“The burden is reality” : “Life is tragic” : “She was Sanctified holy”

“Pick a season”

At Oscar’s Portrait, George Bodmer has the perfect cartoon for our midwestern weather.

[Yesterday in downstate Illinois: snow. And this morning: 27 °F. It got winter.]