The new Blogger interface again

Google is now posting what it calls “weekly updates” on the development of the new Blogger interface. Thus far there has been one update, for “the week of August 1.” The weeks appear to begin on Saturday at Google, and they are very long weeks.

Important for Blogger users: comments posted to the Blogger Help Community (sic) do not reach Google. The way to make a comment that someone at Google will read is to leave feedback, via the question mark that appears top right in the new Blogger interface. You type in the box that pops up — a box that’s already filled with text about leaving feedback. Delete that text and type away.

I just left some feedback about the prolix code that now surrounds every image in the new interface’s HTML window, which makes changing the height and width of images tedious. And I object to Google’s assumption that a user will want to add a caption to every image.

W.G. Sebald would not be happy with the new Blogger.

Related posts
The legacy Blogger interface : Is the new Blogger a New Coke? : The disappearing Blogger Preview

Mystery actor

[Click for a larger view.]

Recognize him? Think you do? Leave your best guess in the comments.

*

This one must be tough. Two hints: The mystery actor is best known for a television role. He’s making his second mystery appearance in these pages.

*

I guess this was a tough one. I’ve revealed the answer in the comments.

More mystery actors (Collect them all!)
? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ?

She’s all that

Radical socialist, or tool of Wall Street? For Donald Trump*’s supporters, Kamala Harris is both.

In truth though, Senator Harris is an excellent choice for vice president. She is much better known than her Senate colleague Tammy Duckworth. Her tough, persistent questioning of William Barr and Brett Kavanaugh is well within recent memory, offering a powerful demonstration of what it means to speak truth to power — even if the speaking is a matter of asking questions. And she will (almost certainly) make a great nominee for president in 2024. I especially like the note of reconciliation in her presence on the ticket: she criticized Biden sharply at the first Democratic debate; Biden asked her to run with him; she said yes. As the song says, Let’s work together.

Related reading
“Harris’s Approval Rating Soars After Trump Reminds Nation How ‘Nasty’ She Was to Kavanaugh” (The New Yorker)

Chicken and cheese

A recipe for sardine pizza prompted Fresca to wonder in a comment about dishes inspired by books and movies.

I have no dish, but I now remember a childhood habit born of reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula. From Jonathan Harker’s Journal:

The Count himself came forward and took off the cover of a dish, and I fell to at once on an excellent roast chicken. This, with some cheese and salad and a bottle of old Tokay, of which I had two glasses, was my supper.

As a boy, with Dracula as my inspiration, I would add a slice of American cheese to my plate whenever we had chicken for dinner. Cheese, right?

Cousin Brucie returns

Cousin Brucie returns to WABC-AM, as in “Seventy-seven, WABC!”

This man was on the radio when I was barely sentient. As they say these days, Wut ?

“In 1917 they say, right?”

Donald Trump*, yesterday:

“In 1917 they say, right? The great, the great pandemic certainly was a terrible thing, where they lost anywhere from fifty to a hundred million people. Probably ended the Second World War, all the soldiers were sick.”

What I’d like to hear a reporter say today:

“Mr. President, there have been questions raised about your grasp of history. The year associated with the influenza epidemic of the last century is not, despite what you have repeatedly said, 1917. It’s 1918. And there is no consensus among historians that the epidemic had anything to do with the end of the Second World War. Just to set the record straight on your command of history: could you tell us when the Second World War took place, who was involved, and what its consequences were for the twentieth century?”

Notice that my imaginary question is something of a trap, since it’s about the war Trump* spoke of. I can imagine a (non-)answer:

“Listen, everyone knows about the Second World War. It was bloody and vicious — almost as vicious as you people are, and nothing like it should ever be allowed to happen again. Thank you, everybody. Thank you very much.”

He lumbers off the podium. And scene.

“We do language”

Toni Morrison:

We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.

From “The Nobel Lecture in Literature.” 1993. In The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2019).

Related reading
All OCA Toni Morrison posts (Pinboard)

Lora

You can find Lora here. Follow the download link, chose Code, then download the ZIP file. The webpage must be outdated, as there are indeed six styles, not four.

[Found via brettterprestra.com.]

The legacy Blogger interface

My hope that the new Blogger interface was proving to be a New Coke is evaporating. I found Orange Crate Art switched over this morning. On my phone in Mobile View (iOS, Safari), I saw no way to switch back. On my Mac, the option to revert to the (so-called) legacy interface is still available. But the promise that “the legacy interface will still be optionally available” is now gone.

Good grief: does one just toss away a legacy? No. A legacy should get preferential treatment and be admitted to a top school despite a mediocre or less than mediocre academic record. Google, please treat the legacy Blogger interface accordingly and give it every unmerited advantage available.

*

9:00 a.m.: The message just now on a Blogger page I created to try out the new interface: “In July, the new Blogger interface will become the default for all users. The legacy interface will still be optionally available.”

Twelve movies

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers.]

The Fat Man (dir. William Castle, 1951). A one-off film with J. Scott Smart reprising his radio serial role as Brad Runyon, bon vivant, gourmet, and detective. The character is said to have been inspired by Dashiell Hammett’s Continental Op, but Runyon seems to me more the Nero Wolfe type. He dines, dances (very well), and investigates the murder of a dentist, all the while looking like John Candy with a fake moustache. A wonderful B-movie with a zillion flashbacks, along with Rock Hudson, Emmett Kelly, and Julie London. ★★★★

*

Trapped (dir. Richard Fleischer, 1949). A semi-documentary story of Treasury agents and counterfeiters? I’m sold. Lloyd Bridges is the nominal star, but the movie’s more compelling presences are John Hoyt as a louche nightclub denizen and the ill-fated Barbara Paxton as a cigarette girl. Three great touches: chewing gum, an apartment where Latin music plays non-stop, and a chase through a Los Angeles streetcar depot. ★★★★

*

Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman (dir. Stuart Heisler, 1947). Susan Hayward stars as Angelica Conway, a nightclub singer who career disappears when her songwriting husband Ken (Lee Bowman) becomes a star himself. Angelica’s descent into alcoholism is fueled by loneliness and suspicions about Ken and his catty assistant Martha (Marsha Hunt). Some great scenes: Angelica and Martha sparring at a party, Angelica and Robert Shayne in a bar; Angelica preparing a meal for her daughter. Bowman is the weak link, but Hayward gives a great (Lupino-esque, I’d say) performance in a forward-looking film that treats alcoholism as a disease. ★★★★

*

Once You Kiss a Stranger. . . (dir. Robert Sparr, 1969). A reimagining of Strangers on a Train, with Paul Burke (beloved in our household from the television series Naked City) as a pro golfer and Carol Lynley as the Bruno Anthony of the piece. Burke is fine as a man in over his head, but the movie is a tour de force for Lynley, by turns seductive, vicious, witty, but always insane. Also featuring a portable TV, an eight-track tape player, an enormous VCR, flocked wallpaper, and a car chase in the Valley (the Valley, always recognizable). With Whit Bissell as a brave psychiatrist and Philip Carey (who played the gay football player on All in the Family) as an egomaniacal golfer. ★★★★

*

Sex and the Single Girl (dir. Richard Quine, 1964). This movie and the previous one remind me how rarely I watch anything from this decade. (Elaine says our best year for movies is 1949 — or is it 1947?) Natalie Wood and Tony Curtis are delightful in this comedy of assumed and mistaken identities; Lauren Bacall and Henry Fonda, less so; Fran Jeffries and Mel Ferrer, much less so; the car chase, much, much less so. The sexual politics (get her drunk) are intolerable; the coyness — a man who has lost his, uhh, “confidence”; a woman who was “active” before marriage, that is, employed — insufferable. ★★

*

Rancho Notorious (dir. Fritz Lang, 1952). Another Criterion Channel noir western. “Legend of Chuck-A-Luck,” a song that runs through the movie, spells out the theme with an awkward redundancy: “hate, murder, and revenge.” No matter: after a brutal beginning, the story follows a ranch-hand (Arthur Kennedy) as he searches for the unknown bad man who raped and murdered his fiancée, ending up at last at Chuck-A-Luck, a ranch and haven for criminals presided over by a vaguely Circe-like Marlene Dietrich. The best line: “I wish you’d go away and come back ten years ago.” ★★★★

*

The Thin Man (dir. W.S. Van Dyke, 1934). The verbal and non-verbal communication between Nick and Nora Charles (William Powell and Myrna Loy) is a delight, ditto the extended party scene, ditto the dinner scene, in which Nick improvises his way to figuring out who done it. The mystery and its cast of characters are not especially interesting, making this relatively short film feel much longer than its eighty minutes. Nora: “Want a drink?” Nick: “What do you think?” ★★★

*

The Two Mrs. Carrolls (dir. Peter Godfrey, 1947). Humphrey Bogart is a painter, of wives, not houses. The second Mrs. Carroll (Barbara Stanwyck) has two challenges to contend with: her husband and a wanna-be philanderer (Alexis Smith). Bogart is all unhinged emoting, but Stanwyck and Smith are well-matched as frenemies, the one anxious, the other cold and unflappable. A better leading man for this picture: James Mason. ★★★

*

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, aka The Hideaways (dir. Fielder Cook, 1973). The Afterschool Special to end all Afterschool Specials: siblings Claudia and Jamie (Sally Prager and Johnny Doran) run away to Manhattan to live in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I read E.L. Konigsburg’s novel for the first time as an adult and loved it. This adaptation, filmed on location, takes us inside Macy’s, the General Post Office Building, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art: O time capsule of Manahatta! Alas, the movie inexplicably veers away from the novel and disappoints when Mrs. Frankweiler (Ingrid Bergman) appears. ★★★

*

Two documentaries by Ron Mann

Imagine the Sound (1981). Music and conversation from four musicians identified with the avant-garde in jazz: Paul Bley, Bill Dixon, Archie Shepp, and Cecil Taylor. To see these musicians on film is a rare thing. But there’s little here to orient a newcomer, and nothing in the way of structure: the film meanders between brief or extended samples of performance and brief or extended samples of conversation. Worst moments: Taylor reading his poetry; best moments: Taylor at the piano. ★★★

Poetry in Motion (1982). I first saw this film of poets talking and reading from their work in 1984, on a date with Elaine. Jim Carroll did an introduction (I recall that he spoke about people who died, among them, no doubt, his friend Ted Berrigan); the projector kept failing; and the audience was, let’s say, irreverent. All these years later, the moments I remember as best — Helen Adam, Amiri Baraka (with David Murray and Steve McCall), Ted Berrigan, Tom Waits — hold up well. But so much of what’s here points toward “spoken word” and the substitution of gestures, gimmickry, and poet voice for the magic of language. ★★★

*

Of Time and the City (dir. Terence Davies, 2008). A deeply personal Liverpool story, made of archival footage and Davies’s narration, which touches on everything from movies to growing up gay to the Beatles to royalty (“The Betty Windsor Show”) to the poverty of crumbling nineteenth-century buildings and new tower blocks. With copious citation and allusion, ranging from Sir Walter Raleigh to Ulysses and Four Quartets. If W.S. Sebald had set out to make a film, it might look something like this one. It’s brilliant film, soon leaving the Criterion Channel. ★★★★

Related reading
All OCA film posts (Pinboard)