Saturday night lineup

Is there a viewer anywhere who can name every current Saturday Night Live cast member? Me, twelve of twenty. I think it’s twenty.

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Okay, 1-A, five letters, “Macbeth witches’ place”? That’s easy. Try 1-D, five letters, “British contemporary of Richard Strauss.” Is he British? I guess he must be. 2-D, five letters, “Get away from Handel operas”? Eh, pretty obviously clued. And 9-D, nine letters, “. . . Tin Tin plot portion, per the title”?

Wait — is it Saturday? Because this Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Brad Wilber, doesn’t solve like a Saturday Stumper. It’s an exceptionally easy Saturday, with answers that are only slightly 33-A, six letters, “Oblique.” But the puzzle is not at all 14-A, six letters, “Yawn-inducing.” It’s full of pleasant surprises. For instance:

4-D, fifteen letters, “Yogurt or oatmeal.” A weird and wonderful answer.

10-D, fifteen letters, “‘To get right to the point . . .’” I can’t remember the last time I heard anyone say the words of the answer.

30-A, eight letters, “Many of today’s tennis pros.” Well, yes.

37-A, seven letters, “What high schoolers sometimes get free.” CHROMEB? — no.

39-A, six letters, “Brown named for a town.” Ah, childhood.

61-A, eight letters, “Instructions to a sitter.” I got it right away. With “instruction,” DONTMOVE would make a good answer.

My favorite clue in this puzzle: 38-D, five letters, “Tubes watched in the kitchen.”

No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.

“Rats!”

[Peanuts, October 31, 1973. Click for a larger view.]

Yesterday’s Peanuts is today’s Peanuts, or, really, yesterday’s Peanuts. This strip from 1973 ran again yesterday in color.

Naked City meta

Here’s a nicely meta moment. Actress Libby Kingston (Nancy Malone) has been fitted for a costume, an “airline hostess” uniform. As she changes behind a curtain, her boyfriend, Detective Adam Flint (Paul Burke), tries on a hat and mugs like a screen hoodlum.

[From the Naked City episode “Bullets Cost Too Much,” January 4, 1961. Click for a larger view.]

There’s another meta moment in this episode, in Libby’s apartment. Libby is in costume for her role in a soap opera. Barbara Lord plays Dee Vale, a nurse who’s knocked at Libby’s door hoping to find Detective Flint. I like this exchange:

“What airline do you fly with, hmm?”

“Oh! The Eighth Avenue. Subway. On my way down to 66th Street, to a television studio. I’m an actress.”

An actor playing a cop playing a screen hoodlum, an actress playing a nurse, and an actress playing an actress playing a screen airline hostess.

[Barbara Lord and Nancy Malone. Click for a larger view.]

Why would Nurse Vale go to Libby’s apartment? There’s a Naked City trope: if Adam can’t be reached at his apartment, he must be at Libby’s place. Detective Arcaro told the nurse she could find Adam there.

Related reading
All OCA Naked City posts (Pinboard)
Elaine’s post about Naked City music

“Mother, I’m a poet!”

A detail from Douglas Crase’s remembrance of John Ashbery, friend and fellow poet:

It was October, bright and chilly, and his mother, then seventy-nine, was raking leaves in the front yard. She was not making much progress. She had a scarf wrapped around her head and her nose was dripping. As John came out of the house she said to him — and she had a voice that could rise in a nasal whine to match his own — “John, if you were any kind of a son at all you’d help your mother with these leaves.”

John, his hand already on the car door, turned briefly back and replied in exasperation, as though she should have known better, “Mother, I’m a poet!”

Related reading
All OCA John Ashbery posts (Pinboard)

The daily news, from a historian

Elaine pointed me to daily news write-ups by Heather Cox Richardson, historian. A good alternative to endless television. Richardson’s Facebook page is public, no account needed. Her write-ups are also available as Letters from an American.

“You’re gonna get better”

Donald Trump* today in Tampa, Florida: “You know the bottom line though? You’re gonna get better. You’re gonna get better. If I can get better, anybody can get better. And I got better fast.”

You heartless, hollow fool.

Trump* equals death. That anyone still cheers for this shambles of a human being amazes me.

Naked City exchange names

[From the Naked City episode “Bullets Cost Too Much,” January 4, 1961. Click any image for a larger view. And notice the Public Telephone sign in the second image.]

Ma Bell’s 1955 list of recommended exchange names includes WAbash, WAlker, WAlnut, WArwirck, and WAverly. WAverly, as in Waverly Place and the Waverly Diner, sounds to me like the most citified choice, but I can find no evidence that WAverly was a Manhattan exchange. PLaza is a bonus in this episode. Did you know that the Hotel Pennsylvania still has its PLaza number? 212-736-5000. But the hotel is closed for now.

I love the idea of being able to send a notice (how?) to “all cleaners & dyers.” And I love the idea that a hold-up man whose jacket gets stained as he holds up a bar would think about having that jacket dry cleaned. Maybe even Martinized. It was a different time.

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) : Naked City (8) : 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?

Waller Razaf Costello & Batiste

I was trying to pin it down all through Elvis Costello’s “Hey Clockface” — where do I know those chord changes from?

[Elvis Costello and Jon Batiste, A Late Show, October 28, 2020.]

Yes, those changes are from “How Can Face Me?” by Fats Waller and Andy Razaf. Here’s the 1934 recording by Fats Waller and His Rhythm, with Herman Autrey, trumpet; Floyd O’Brien, trombone; Mezz Mezzrow, clarinet; Al Casey, guitar; Billy Taylor, bass; Alvin Dial, drums. YouTube won’t allow it to be embedded. But here it is anyway, turning up at the end of last night’s Costello and Batiste performance. Wonderful stuff.

Bob Woodward, insightful

Bob Woodward, on CNN just now, commented on the Trump* administration’s response to COVID-19, as explained by Jared Kushner in an interview back in April. Said Woodward, “I honestly think this gets to a point where there’s a moral dimension to it.”

Gosh, ya think? And is there also perhaps a moral dimension to the journalist’s choice to keep his knowledge under wraps for months while a book took shape?

A self-owning comment from Kushner in the interview: “The most dangerous people around the president are the overconfident idiots.” Dunning-Kruger!