“Nancy 11/1/2020 strip”

Today’s Nancy is a winner. Olivia Jaimes once again expands the possibilities of what’s possible in panels.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

The death tour, continued

From The New York Times:

A group of Stanford University economists who created a statistical model estimate that there have been at least 30,000 coronavirus infections and 700 deaths as a result of 18 campaign rallies President Trump held from June to September.

See also a USA Today analysis of the fallout from five Trump* rallies. Truly, Trump* = death.

Breaking news

[“Fall Back.” xkcd, October 28, 2020.]

Just one panel from Wednesday’s xkcd. Last night I dreamed the breaking news that Donald Trump* was replacing Mike Pence with an unidentified woman. More on this story if it develops.

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.