Small pleasures

Buying toothpaste because the gauge is pointing to E, and then getting at least another two weeks' worth of paste from the old tube. Squeeze!

[No. 1 in what I think will be a series.]

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is another 2010 repeat. It’s by “Anna Stiga,” Stan Again, a pseudonym Stan Newman uses for easier Stumpers. I found it an easy puzzle, even by Stiga standards. One sign that Newman has, as Newsday points out, updated the puzzles running during his vacation: 38-A, nine letters, “Odin’s wife in 2011's Thor.”

Some clue-and-answer pairs I especially liked:

11-A, three letters, “US stamp series subject of 1945–46.” The rules about this stuff have changed, as I realized from the answer.

24-A, nine letters, “Plenty of nothing.” I was thinking of hot air and windbags. I suspect the answer comes from the world of sport. (It does.)

29-A, six letters, “Havana? No.” A blast from the past.

29-D, three letters, “HHH successor as VP.” Who’d have thought the name would be back in the air now?

32-D, eight letters, “Shakespearean title character.” Gotta reach a bit here, or at least I did.

43-D, six letters, “Tot’s coat attachment.” Aww.

51-A, six letters, “Marimba mallet material.” Huh. This clue made me think about how many musical instruments I’ve never tried.

An odd word, for me: the answer to 48-A, nine letters, “Hall of Famer, by definition.” But I see that in a certain discourse, yes, that’s the word.

My favorite answer in today’s puzzle, 32-A, fifteen letters, “Second-string players?” Though I’d hardly call them second-stringers.

No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.

A Berger’s Deli menu

I looked through my modest folder of menus, and there it was, circa 2002, a menu from Berger’s Deli:

  
  
[Click any image for a larger view.]

I look forward to the time when it’s possible to walk into a restaurant, sit down, and order anything on the menu. And this is quite a menu. Enjoy, vicariously. And don’t miss the H&H bagels.

[The colors are not consistent from page to page. Blame the lighting crew, all on vacation.]

Sort of quixotic

Donald Trump*’s effort to overturn the result of the presidential election is not quixotic. But Donald has one thing in common with the Don: they both tilt at windmills.

New Year’s Eve 1920

In hotels, no serving, only looking the other way. In other establishments, a different approach.

[“Sober Crowds Jam Streets of City on New Year’s Eve: Bigger Celebration Than for Several Years, but Alcoholic Revelry Is Subdued.” The New York Times, January 1, 1921.]

You can hear the wheels turning as the reporter tries out elegant (or inelegant) variations: “a peg of whisky,” “a pony of pure fire.”

May 2021 be a better year than the year that ends tonight. I want to borrow from D.H. Lawrence and say, Look! We have come through! But so many have not.

Not quixotic

An MSNBC anchor referred to Donald Trump*’s “quixotic quest” to overturn the result of the presidential election. Uh, no.

Trump* is out of touch with reality, and his quest is bound to fail. But his effort isn’t quixotic, not “foolishly impractical especially in the pursuit of ideals,” not “marked by rash lofty romantic ideas or extravagantly chivalrous action” (Merriam-Webster). To the contrary, Trump*’s effort is base, ignoble, and self-serving, a subversion of democracy and a cheap con. There’s nothing quixotic about it.

Needs rephrased

From a TV commercial for a community college: “Choose a major that will prepare you for a promising future or university transfer.”

[Need + past participle is a thing.]

Berger’s Deli

[From the Naked City episode “Go Fight City Hall,” October 31, 1962. Click for a larger street.]

Here’s another instance of what I’ll call the Naked City effect, turning Manhattan into a small town of immediately recognizable locations. That’s Berger’s Deli, at 44 West 47th Street, in the Diamond District. You might know the street from Marathon Man. You might also know it as the longtime home of the Gotham Book Mart, which stood at no. 41. My friend Aldo Carrasco and I once had lunch at Berger’s after a visit to the Gotham. My fambly had lunch at Berger’s somewhere in the 1990s after visiting an exhibition of Edward Gorey’s work at the Gotham. And when I made a trip to New York in 2002 to see a Henry Darger exhibit and hear John Ashbery read from his work, I had lunch at Berger’s after what turned out to be a final trip to the Gotham. Here’s the menu — I took a copy.

Proust reminds us that “houses, roads, avenues are as fleeting, alas, as the years.” Yes, it’s true. The Gotham is gone, and Berger’s is now at 2 East 39th Street. Here’s the current menu.

You can see the Gotham’s “Wise Men Fish Here” sign and Berger’s at 0:25 in this clip from Marathon Man.

Related reading
All OCA Naked City posts (Pinboard)

[From Swann's Way, trans. Lydia Davis (New York: Viking, 2002).]

“Rheumatism rather than literature”

The narrator wants to be a writer. M. de Norpois, former ambassador, knows of a friend’s son with the same ambition:

Marcel Proust, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, trans. James Grieve (New York: Penguin, 2002).

I had planned to end my sentence-a-day posts with the end of Swann’s Way. But I had to share this sentence.

Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)

Dwight D. Ritz

[Nancy, December 30, 2020. Click for a larger view.]

Aunt Fritzi has said that Nancy better have “some kind of justification” for writing on the window. Nancy offers that justification in the form of an Eisenhower matrix. Of course she’s replaced important/unimportant/urgent/not urgent with her own terms.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)