Jeez

“His business card is seven inches long”: Brian Williams, introducing a guest on The Eleventh Hour just now.

Bob Drylie, reader of Proust

Bob Drylie was a home-repair contractor, reader, writer, and artist. From a beautiful appreciation by one of his customers:

“Whatcha readin’?” he called, descending the ladder. I told him of my New Year’s resolution to read all seven novels of Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. This was the second.

“When you read them all, you will join me in a select group,” he said, grinning broadly.

Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)

Canteen Canteen Canteen

[He Ran All the Way (dir. John Berry, 1951). Click for a larger view.]

On their way to the scene of their crime, Norman Lloyd and John Garfield walk right past Canteen Canteen Canteen. Gentlemen, you would have been better off stopping for a snack and exiting the garage. But then, no movie.


[Click for a still larger view.]

The snacks on hand: “Delicious Fresh Nuts,” 1¢; candy, 5¢; gum, price unknown. A Hershey bar stands in the center candy slot; Wrigley’s Spearmint is on the right in the gum offerings.

The same vending-machine triptych can be seen in They Live by Night (1948). I doubt it’s this very set of machines: there, the shiny letters above the mirror are gone, and the stickers on the middle machine differ. And besides, the machines in He Ran All the Way appear to be working in a genuine garage.

Merriam-Webster has a puzzling etymology for canteen :

French cantine bottle case, sutler’s shop, from Italian cantina wine cellar, probably from canto corner, from Latin canthus iron tire.

The Online Etymology Dictionary traces more or less the same history but adds a helpful gloss on the word:

Thus is perhaps another descendant of the many meanings that were attached to Latin canto “corner;” in this case, perhaps “corner for storage.”

If a canteen is, as M-W says, “a small cafeteria or snack bar,” this canteen is a pretty poor one. But wait: Canteen, capitalized, is also the name of a vending-machine company, still vending today. You can see the name on a sticker on the center machine. Here’s a timeline that accounts for the company name and answers a burning question: why do vending machines have mirrors?

As an example of the art of the vending machine, Canteen Canteen Canteen is undeniably impressive.

Related posts
The gum machines of Henry (Many with a mirror)
Mid-century cigarette machine

Chris Matthews and women

In the aftermath of Chris Matthews’s absurd interview of Elizabeth Warren, Laura Bassett, journalist, writes about her encounter with Matthews: “Like Warren, I Had My Own Sexist Run-In with Chris Matthews” (GQ ).

What I didn’t know: Matthews has a well-documented history of speaking to and about women in demeaning, sexist ways. Says Bassett, “The number of on-air incidents is long, exhausting, and creepy.” The link in that quotation is Bassett’s, and it goes to a 2018 Twitter thread with many examples. There’s also an off-the-air remark caught on tape: “Where’s that Bill Cosby pill I brought with me?”

Why is this guy still working at MSNBC?

Says Elaine, “We need Murphy Brown to whip the shit out of these people.”

*

2:16 p.m.: Matthews was missing from yesterday’s MSNBC coverage of the South Carolina primary. Hmm.

*

March 2: As readers just let me know in the comments, tonight was Chris Matthews’s last appearance on MSNBC’s Hardball. His farewell makes clear that his remarks to and about women play a role (the leading role, no doubt) in his departure.

The blind king

If the mask fits, &c.

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Lester Ruff, is. Is less rough, that is. Gimmes abound: 8-D, four letters, “Whom Sam calls ‘Miss’”; 44-A, three letters, “Name associated with fins”; 48-A, four letters, “‘Garden of Earthly Delights’ depiction.”

My favorite clue-and-answer pairs:

7-D, five letters, “Backs up when one shouldn’t.” A clever way to clue a familiar crossword answer.

27-A, five letters, “No time at all.” You don’t often hear the answer in conversation these days.

30-A, three letters, “It’s just above 4.” Excellent!

38-A, fourteen letters, “Second album with ‘All My Loving.’” Why? Just because. But “Because” is on a later album.

And a clue whose answer I could not understand, until I just did: 24-D, seven letters, “She’s repurposed heaters.”

No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.

Finding stories

In an episode of BBC Radio 4’s Word of Mouth, Clare Muireann Murphy, storyteller, tells Michael Rosen where she finds stories:

“That’s the life’s work, isn’t it? It’s to walk through the world and keep my eyes and ears and heart open all the time for where the next story is coming from. So I read a lot, I talk to a lot of people, and I listen carefully.”

Related reading
Clare Murphy’s website

Dover Books

Karin Falcone Krieger tells the story of Dover Books: “This Is a Permanent Book” (Contingent Magazine).

Dover editions are permanent indeed. I just took down a Dover reprint of Richard Réti’s Modern Ideas in Chess, which I bought almost fifty years ago as a young chess fanatic. Signatures tight, pages unyellowed. It is a permanent book.

Another Dover reprint has been sitting out for everyday use, the scores of the Beethoven string quartets. A little beat up (in the manner of a well-used telephone directory), but it too is a permanent book.

Dover Thrift Editions of course are another story: cheap, cheap paper.

Now where is my Dover copy of Flatland?

Related reading
Dover Publications (All the books)

Almodóvar Noris

[Pain and Glory (dir. Pedro Almodóvar, 2019). Click for a larger view.]

Salvador Mallo (Antonio Banderas) is using a Staedtler Noris to mark a passage in a Spanish translation of Fernando Pessoa’s Livro do Desassossego [The book of disquiet]. Here’s the English translation provided in the subtitles:

Life disgusts me as a useless medicine. It is then when I clearly feel how easy it would be to get away from this tediousness if I had the simple strength to want to really push it away.

Here, in Spanish, is a commentary on the books Mallo reads in the film. And here is Google Translate’s best shot at a translation into English, one that turns “acotaciones a lápiz” into “pencil dimensions.” DeepL does a better job (“pencil marks”) if you’re willing to copy and paste the Spanish text in two parts.

And while I’m thinking about stationery, here are some more Almodóvar items: another Noris, a Parker T-Ball Jotter, and an array of notebooks.

Related reading
All OCA pencil posts (Pinboard)

“Like a duck to water”

Robertson Davies, Fifth Business (1970).

Yes, it was water.

Also from this novel
“Fellows of the first importance” : “Visible branch establishments”