Father’s Day

I had a conversation with my dad in a dream a couple of weeks ago. He wanted me to order something for him from Amazon — no doubt a CD. But what? Maybe he’ll call back.

Happy Father’s Day to all.

A joke in the traditional manner

Why sharpen your pencil to write a Dad joke?

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 shape-shifting car? : 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 ghosts hide their wrinkles? : 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’s the name of the Illinois town where dentists want to live? : 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 the Autobahn, the elementary school, the Golden Retriever, Bela Lugosi, Samuel Clemens, the doctor, the plumber, the senior citizen, Oliver Hardy, and the ophthalmologist. Elaine gets credit for the Illinois town. My dad was making such jokes long before anyone called them “dad jokes.” I continue in the traditional manner.]

Real chyrons, imaginary crowd

From CNN:

Trump campaign cancels address to “overflow crowd,” as overflow crowd fails to materialize outside Tulsa rally.

And:

Trump campaign tells supporters “There’s still space!” as crowd trickles in to Tulsa rally venue.

I was about to suggest that the Trump* campaign will say that the media scared people away, but I just heard that the campaign has already said just that. They’re also blaming protesters.

Today’s Saturday Stumper

[There’s a slight spoiler in what follows.]

Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper is by Brad Wilber. It’s a good one, with many out of the way answers. Should out of the way be hyphenated? Do I need to look that up now? Let me revise: It’s a good one, with many unusual answers. And it uses every letter of the alphabet but V. (Which must mean something?)

I started with 1-A, eight letters, “Intricate weave.” Man, I just smashed that clue. Or rather, the answer. Smashed it to bits. That answer, even smashed, gave me 1-D, six letters, “Turnkey” and 2-D, six letters, “One end of the Erie Canal.” Folk music FTW.

Clue-and-answer pairs that I especially liked:

14-A, nine letters, “Precursor of leaving home.” Yes, that kind of home.

15-A, five letters, “‘Daytime’s Leading Lady.’” I watched her for years, crushing a bit.

19-A, six letters, “Compelling to go to court.” I learned something from this clue.

22-A, five letters, “Fund-raisers spoiled by showers.” No, that can’t be right. Oh, wait — it’s right.

37-A, seven letters, “CoverGirl makeup creator.” It feels so strange to write the name. I think this answer is an example of what crossword people mean by “crunchy.”

45-D, five letters, “Achilles, per Homer.” Huh. I’ve seen it as “fair,” “fiery,” “red-gold,” and “sandy.” In Homer’s Greek, it’s six letters: ξανθῆς. It must have been Achilles who said “If I’ve only one life . . . let me live it as a _____.”

50-A, three letters, “PR, for example.” Nice misdirection.

51-D, four letters, “It’s often found in salad bowls.” Especially mid-century modern ones, I think.

56-A, nine letters, “Fake cannon named for pacifists.” What?!

57-D, three letters, “Reader’s resource.” Not an APP.

58-A, five letters, “The Jetsons are on his autobio cover.” There’s an autobiography?!

One clue that rankled: 29-A, four letters, “He's not without egotism.” It’s one of those clues, and the answer is kinda forced.

No outright spoilers: the answers are in the comments.

Jeff Tweedy giving back

My friend Stefan Hagemann pointed me to this news: Jeff Tweedy (Wilco) will be donating five percent of his songwriting royalties to organizations working toward racial justice. And he’s asking other musicians and songwriters to do the same. As he writes in a tweet, “The modern music industry is built almost entirely on Black art.” Well, yes.

Speaking of which: I saw by chance yesterday an NPR story about Bob Dylan’s new song “False Prophet” and its unacknowledged borrowing from a 1954 recording by Billy "The Kid" Emerson. NPR is more generous to Dylan than I’m willing to be: in 2020 I see not “a familiar, recurrent aspect of [Dylan’s] creative process” but unacknowledged borrowing, from a source unlikely to be recognized by most of Dylan’s listeners. And I have to remind myself: here’s a guy who borrows from CliffsNotes and SparkNotes for his Nobel Prize lecture. That’s not what used to be called “the folk process.” That’s ripping off.

Bob, how about kicking in some of your royalties?

[As I wrote to Stefan, every time I begin to warm to Bob Dylan, he does something to make me step back.]

Hi and Lois watch

[Hi and Lois, June 19, 2020. Click for a larger view.]

The Bailey genes are strong. Lois is Beetle Bailey’s sister.

But look at that phone number. Yes, it’s that number, thirty-eight years later.

Related reading
All OCA Hi and Lois posts (Pinboard)

“Is it still celebrated?” Yes.

From a conversation between the Reverend Alonzo Hickman and Adam Sunraider, a race-baiting United States senator. As a boy, Sunraider was known as Bliss. Hickman raised him. The two are speaking of old times:


Ralph Ellison, Juneteenth, ed. John F. Callahan (New York: Vintage, 2000).

The Washington Post reported on the discovery — just yesterday — of the original Juneteenth order, dated June 19, 1865.

Related reading
All OCA Ralph Ellison posts (Pinboard)

Tommy’s tickets

Tommy the cop ran a sleep store. Customers would come in to sleep. They brought Tommy free tickets for all manner of events — concerts, games, movies. The store teemed with tickets. Said one customer, “I see where you get your tickets, Tommy.”

Related reading
All OCA dream posts (Pinboard)

[Police, corruption, and death all lurk in this tiny dream. Elaine made the Tulsa connection. Tommy = Donny?]

Three words from Charlotte Brontë

From Jane Eyre (1847), ing, holm, and beck :

How different had this scene looked when I viewed it laid out beneath the iron sky of winter, stiffened in frost, shrouded with snow! — when mists as chill as death wandered to the impulse of east winds along those purple peaks, and rolled down “ing” and holm till they blended with the frozen fog of the beck!

Ing is the most recent of these words. The Oxford English Dictionary has a first citation from 1483 and gives this definition:

a common name in the north of England, and in some other parts, for a meadow; esp. one by the side of a river and more or less swampy or subject to inundation.

The word derives from the Old Norse eng, meaning “meadow, meadow-land.”

Holm goes back to Beowulf, where it means “the sea, the wave.” But the meaning in Brontë’s sentence comes much later:

a piece of flat low-lying ground by a river or stream, submerged or surrounded in time of flood.

This sense of the word derives from Old Norse holmr, “islet in a bay, creek, lake, or river, meadow on the shore.” The earliest citation is undated but predates 1440. The dictionary adds that holm is still

in living use in the south of Scotland (howm) and north of England, and extending far south in place-names; “a flat pasture in Romney Marsh (Kent) is yet called the Holmes” (Way).

“Living use” in that sentence means in 1899, but holm does appear to still be used in place names. And there’s still a Holmes Way.

And now for beck:

a brook or stream: the ordinary name in those parts of England from Lincolnshire to Cumbria which were occupied by the Danes and Norwegians; hence, often used spec. in literature to connote a brook with stony bed, or rugged course, such as are those of the north country.

Beck dates to before 1400 and comes from the Old Norse bekk-r, “brook, rivulet.”

“Such as are those of the north country”: that’s beautiful, no?

A related post
A word from Charlotte Brontë: beck

A word from Charlotte Brontë

It’s Barmecide, from Jane Eyre (1847):

That night, on going to bed, I forgot to prepare in imagination the Barmecide supper of hot roast potatoes, or white bread and new milk, with which I was wont to amuse my inward cravings.

It’s a noun. The Oxford English Dictionary gives this defintion: “One who offers imaginary food or illusory benefits. Often attributive.” The etymology is the good part:

the patronymic of a family of princes ruling at Bagdad just before Haroun-al-Raschid, concerning one of whom the story is told in the Arabian Nights, that he put a succession of empty dishes before a beggar, pretending that they contained a sumptuous repast — a fiction which the beggar humorously accepted.

Pass the potatoes.

A related post
Three words from Charlotte Brontë: ing, holm, beck