I called the assisted-living place to reserve the gazebo for a visit with my mom. “You sound just like her,” the staff member said.
I have long known that I sound just like my dad. Plumbers, when I would answer my dad’s business phone: “Oh, jeez, you sound just like your father.” But yesterday marks the first time anyone has told me that I sound just like my mother.
As the staff member went on to say, she meant my accent, or alleged accent. Students, too, used to tell me sometimes: “I love your accent.” Only people from elsewhere have accents, of course.
The Brooklyn lives loudly within me.
[That final sentence is meant to ring a bell.]
Monday, October 12, 2020
Brooklyn, represent
By Michael Leddy at 9:04 AM comments: 0
“Red meets black, you’re okay, Jack”
[Mark Trail, October 12, 2020. Click for a larger view.]
Mark Trail has a new artist. Her name is Jules Rivera. She calls herself Mark Trail’s new dad. Here’s an article about the change.
Yes, that’s a camcorder, not a phone, in Cherry Trail’s hands, which I think must be a joke at the expense of the early aughts.
*
And now I’m surprised to see that news of the switch made The New York Times in September.
Related reading
All OCA Mark Trail posts (Pinboard)
By Michael Leddy at 8:53 AM comments: 2
Sunday, October 11, 2020
A precept from Paracelsus
It’s National Coming Out Day. And by chance, I read this sentence this afternoon, in Robertson Davies’s The Rebel Angels (1981), where it’s attributed to Paracelsus:
Be not another if thou canst be thyself.
By Michael Leddy at 2:15 PM comments: 0
Man and Superman
The New York Times reports on a Donald Trump* scheme:
In several phone calls last weekend from the presidential suite at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Mr. Trump shared an idea he was considering: When he left the hospital, he wanted to appear frail at first when people saw him, according to people with knowledge of the conversations. But underneath his button-down dress shirt, he would wear a Superman T-shirt, which he would reveal as a symbol of strength when he ripped open the top layer. He ultimately did not go ahead with the stunt.
By Michael Leddy at 9:02 AM comments: 4
Saturday, October 10, 2020
Bikes and birds
A former Trump* White House official speaks:
“They aren’t even considering what happens when he’s feeling worse than he’s feeling now, when he’s hopped up full of steroids and other performance enhancers. He’s on the sort of drugs you’d see with a Tour de France rider in the mid-’90s!” Another way to say this, the former White House official said, was that the president is “hopped up on more drugs than a Belgian racing pigeon.” In keeping with the bird theme, this person said the president’s illness was proof that “the chickens are coming home to roost.”
By Michael Leddy at 4:05 PM comments: 0
Today’s Saturday Stumper
Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Matthew Sewell, is a really good one, meaning 1. that I could solve it, and 2. that I could solve it in about twenty-four minutes. Some giveaways, some stumpish clues, some surprises and weirdness and fun. I started with a giveaway: 1-D, three letters, “It had 300+ campus chapters in ’69.” Only one possible answer, really, for that clue, even if the answer was a little before my time.
Some clue-and-answer pairs I especially liked:
5-D, five letters, “Hand-made props.” Stumpish.
8-D, four letters, “Talk follower or preceder.” Surprising.
24-A, seven letters, “Guys set for life.” I was thinking STATUES, though the clock is ticking, or has ticked, for so many of them — and rightly so.
26-A, four letters, “Chica, brevemente.” Maybe a giveaway, but the clue redeems the crosswordese.
27-D, four letters, “Either of two in the Bluetooth logo.” So that’s what they are! So much fun with shorter answers in this puzzle.
33-A, nine letters, “Swing shift?” I was thinking hours.
41-A, five letters, “Upsize, say.” I did not see this one coming.
One clue that made me wince: 45-A, three letters, “Pronoun in Hiroshima.” There’s a place name that should be off-limits for wordplay, I’d say.
And one clue that leaves me baffled: 32-A, four letters, “Suspended course.”
Huh? Wha?
No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.
By Michael Leddy at 10:03 AM comments: 3
Newman speaks
[“A Message from Your Friendly Local Mail Carrier.” From PACRONYM.]
I’m not sure that it strikes just the right tone, but I can’t resist sharing it.
By Michael Leddy at 9:37 AM comments: 2
While I was sleeping
Earlier this morning, Orange Crate Art had its two millionth visitor, from Istanbul, visiting a post about the Mayflower Coffee Shop(pe). Yay.
I suspect that the visitor was seeking to clarify a reference in Frank O’Hara’s poem “Music.” Search for “mayflower coffee shoppe ” and “frank o’hara ” and my post should be the first result. Or at least one of the first results.
It was mid-afternoon in Istanbul when someone there found the post. The Internet, it’s a wonderful thing.
By Michael Leddy at 9:34 AM comments: 0
Friday, October 9, 2020
A commercial to go with it
David Plouffe’s description of Donald Trump*: “A spray-tanned, drugged-up pitchman for Regeneron.” Now there’s a TV commercial. Or a “TV commercial.”
[Plouffe’s words: yesterday, on MSNBC.]
By Michael Leddy at 9:40 AM comments: 5
“I might as well”
Maria Magdalena Theotoky is a graduate student at Spook, the College of St. John and Holy Ghost. She has signed up for New Testament Greek with a professor she calls Prof. the Rev., Simon Darcourt. Prof. the Rev. is checking his students’ Latin skills by asking for a translation of a short passage. It forms the motto, he says, for the work of his seminar: “Conloqui et conridere et vicissim benevole obsequi, simul leger libros dulciloquos, simul nugari et simul honestari.“ Maria is the only woman in the class of five. And she is the only student who can provide a translation.
Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels (1981).
The Rebel Angels is the first novel of The Cornish Trilogy. Only one-thousand-and-something pages to go!
Related reading
All OCA Robertson Davies posts (Pinboard)
[The source for the passage: book 4, chapter 8. Augustine is describing pleasures with friends.]
By Michael Leddy at 8:59 AM comments: 0