Reality just got a little weirder

I’m not linking, but I just read that Stormy Daniels (yes, that Stormy Daniels) will be conducting a paranormal investigation at a nearby location, once a poorhouse, later a psychiatric hospital. Tickets are $75.

Advice from Colbert

Stephen Colbert just now, offering advice to Susan Page, the moderator of tonight’s debate:

“Susan, if you want to make Mike Pence shut up, you have to ask him to say ‘Black lives matter.’”

I feel sorry for Daniel Dale

Oh, the work of a legit fact-checker. My fact-checking of Mike Pence can be much more casual. No. No. No again. Nope. False, I’m afraid. Uh-uh. No, not that one neither.

*

Kamala Harris was impressive. Though Pence seemed to be using up more time, CNN clocked the candidates as virtually equal. I think Harris was able to turn Pence’s endlessness against him: she waited as he went on and on, then insisted on time to respond, and, in so doing, had the last word in a number of exchanges. I believe that rhetorical strategy is known as rope-a-dope.

Two posts in retrospect

I spent a little time today going through recent OCA posts in Pinboard, having finally decided that I had to tag some of them with pandemic. Two of those posts look newly strange:

~ in a March 6 post, I linked to a Borowitz Report citing Donald Trump* as “the source of the community spread of coronavirus misinformation throughout the United States.” That was satire. And now in October, the Cornell Alliance for Science has identified Trump* as the “single largest driver” of misinformation about COVID-19.

~ In a March 9 post about Trump*’s paranoia and magical thinking, I quoted the journalist Gabriel Sherman:

Last week Trump told aides he’s afraid journalists will try to purposefully contract coronavirus to give it to him on Air Force One, a person close to the administration told me.

Given such dark imaginings, can we rule out the possibility that Trump* might have been hoping, even if vaguely, to infect Joe Biden at last week’s debate? I don’t think so.

A suggestion from Annie Atkins

[By Annie Atkins. Click for a larger view.]

Annie Atkins is a graphic designer. She was the lead graphic designer for The Grand Budapest Hotel. Yes, she did the Mendl’s box. Here’s a 2017 interview. And here’s an article about the poster project.

The image above is now available in a set of postcards (“€2 of each sale will be donated directly to St David’s Hospice in North Wales”). Squarespace keeps timing out when I try to order. Must keep trying.

I found this image via a nice slice of tororo shiru.

[I would like to see “Wear a Mask.” But the posters are from early on in the pandemic.]

Hi and Lois watch

[Hi and Lois, October 7, 2020. Click for a larger view.]

“My touchpad”? I guess they didn’t want to say “iPad.” But they could have gone with “tablet.” A touchpad is something else entirely.

I suspect that Hi-Lo Amalgamated, not Dot herself, is the source of error here. No child of the twenty-first century, not even a two-dimensional one born in 1954, would call that device a touchpad.

Related reading
All OCA Hi and Lois posts (Pinboard)

Forty-five

If there is any question about the mental health of our president: he has posted forty-five tweets and retweets in the last three hours.

October 10, 9:03 a.m.: And forty-one tweets and retweets in the last hour.

An EXchange name sighting

[An unnamed extortionist (Peter Falk) makes a business call. From the Naked City episode “Lady Bug, Lady Bug,” December 9, 1958. Click for a larger view.]

If you squint a little, you can make out the exchange name: TEmpleton. As contributors to the Telephone EXchange Name Project report, TEmpleton was a genuine Manhattan exchange. Says one contributor,

Mrs. John L. Strong, a New York society stationer, has had the number TEmpleton 8-3775 since the late 1940's. The shop is located at 699 Madison Avenue.

Not anymore: the company folded in 2009. The brand was purchased at auction that year, and whoever Mrs. John L. Strong now is, she sells online.

But we were talking about TEmpleton:

[TEmpleton3-9754. Click for a larger view.]

Elaine and I are making our way through the four seasons of Naked City for a second time. For anyone who loves the idea of mid-century New York, it’s a treat.

More EXchange names on screen
Act of Violence : The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse : Armored Car Robbery : Baby Face : Blast of Silence : The Blue Dahlia : Blue Gardenia : Boardwalk Empire : Born Yesterday : The Brasher Doubloon : The Brothers Rico : The Case Against Brooklyn : Chinatown : Danger Zone : The Dark Corner : Dark Passage : Deception : Deux hommes dans Manhattan : Dick Tracy’s Deception : Down Three Dark Streets : Dream House : East Side, West Side : Fallen Angel : Framed : The Little Giant : Loophole : The Man Who Cheated Himself : Modern Marvels : Murder by Contract : Murder, My Sweet : My Week with Marilyn : Naked City (1) : Naked City (2) : Naked City (3) : Naked City (4) : Naked City (5) : Naked City (6) : Naked City (7) : Nightfall : Nightmare Alley : Out of the Past : Perry Mason : Pitfall : The Public Enemy : Railroaded! : Red Light : Side Street : The Slender Thread : Stage Fright : Sweet Smell of Success : Tension : This Gun for Hire : Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

No bottom

Jesus Mary and Joseph: Donald Trump* just removed his mask before entering the White House.

To paraphrase (once again) something Gertrude Stein may have said, There ain’t any bottom, there ain’t going to be any bottom, there never has been any bottom, that’s the bottom.

Watch a closeup and you can see gasping.

And then he came back out, no mask, to be filmed telling people not to be afraid of COVID-19. And that maybe he’s immune. Seems like a good time to revisit Nicholas Ray’s 1956 film Bigger Than Life.

Help Don Jr.

Vanity Fair reports on a rift in the Trump* family:

According to sources, Don Jr. has told friends that he tried lobbying Ivanka Trump, Eric Trump, and Jared Kushner to convince the president that he needs to stop acting unstable. “Don Jr. has said he wants to stage an intervention, but Jared and Ivanka keep telling Trump how great he’s doing,” a source said.

Don Jr., please know that you are not alone. Millions of people are staging an intervention right now, in person and by mail.

[P.S. to Don Jr.: Your father isn’t acting.]