Call “Dr. Fauci” by his full name

A note to the news, not that the news is listening:

When introducing or making a first reference to Dr. Anthony Fauci, please refer to him by his full name and position. He is not a cartoon or character, à la Drs. Evil, No, Oz, and Phil. So “Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,” please.

Peanuts selfhood

I followed as best I could the guidance in “How to draw yourself as a Peanuts character” (kottke.org).

Alas, the Peanuts childhood paunch is too much like adult reality.

Related reading
All OCA Peanuts posts (Pinboard)

[It seems to me that if you’re going to post about this video, you should be willing to share a drawing.]

Today’s Newsday Saturday

Today’s Newsday  Saturday crossword, by Matthew Sewell, is a satisfying puzzle. Nothing like last week’s Saturday (which was a Stumper in everything but name), and too many three-letter answers (seventeen of seventy-two), but still a good puzzle, with tough spots here and there and two triple-stacks of ten-letter answers.

Some clue-and-answer pairs I especially liked:

1-A, ten letters, “Hard to read at the table.” Just because I saw it right away.

22-D, five letters, “Taco truck descriptor.” A tad misdirective.

34-D, nine letters, “Action or war.” Unexpected.

35-D, nine letters, “It’s carried out.” Regularly.

64-A, four letters, “Smartphone add-on.” Not that obvious at first.

One clue I take exception to: 40-A, five letters, “Word from the Greek for ‘skill-less person.’” The phrasing here is tricky: Is it a word for ‘skill-less person’ that comes from the Greek? Or is it a word that comes from the Greek word for ‘skill-less person’? It’s meant to be the latter, but it’s a bit of a reach to tie the Greek word to this meaning. I’ve written more about the Greek word in the comments.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

No no. 2s?

A CNN teaser for a story about shortages affecting back-to-school shopping just made reference to children “stuck with the dreaded no. 1 pencil.” In other words, there’s a shortage of no. 2s — at least supposedly.

Dreaded? I say no. Soft and dark, a no. 1 pencil makes for pleasant writing. And if you’re a kid in school, a no. 1 gives you additional opportunities to get up from your desk and sharpen. All good.

But what multinational retailer sells no. 1 pencils?

Related reading
All OCA pencil posts (Pinboard)

A Lifehacker headline

A clickbait headline from Lifehacker this morning: “How to Start Dating Again If You’re Unvaccinated.” (I won’t link.)

I think the last time I looked at Lifehacker they were pushing a mini-tool for cleaning semi-automatic weapons as a perfect everyday carry.

Stay classy, Lifehacker.

“Got that? Sardines.”

Jeanne (Isabelle Huppert), the village postmistress, calls in an grocery order for her friend Sophie (Sandrine Bonnaire), a maid in service at a country estate. That’s Sophie standing off to the side. From La Cérémonie (dir. Claude Chabrol, 1995). Click any image for a larger view.


I find the dialogue a little puzzling. The family makes their own sardines, but those from the grocer are better? No matter: there are more important things in this movie to think about.

Related reading
All OCA sardine posts (Pinboard)

Gum nonsense

From “The Face to Forget,” an episode of the radio program The Adventures of Philip Marlowe (June 14, 1950). These three spots almost send me off to buy gum:

“To make every day more enjoyable, treat yourself often to refreshing, delicious Wrigley’s Spearmint Chewing Gum. Here’s a taste treat you can enjoy indoors, outdoors, at work or at play. The cool, long-lasting mint flavor refreshes you. The smooth, steady chewing helps keep you fresh and alert. Adds enjoyment to whatever you’re doing. Wrigley’s Spearmint Chewing Gum — healthful, refreshing, delicious.”

“To make every day more enjoyable, treat yourself often to refreshing, delicious Wrigley’s Spearmint Chewing Gum. The lively, full-bodied real mint flavor cools your mouth, moistens your throat, freshens your taste. And the chewing itself gives you a little lift, helps you keep going at your best. So for real chewing enjoyment that’s refreshing and long-lasting, always keep Wrigley’s Spearmint Chewing Gum handy. Healthful, delicious Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum will make every day more enjoyable.”

“Remember, friends, to make every day more enjoyable, treat yourself often to refreshing, delicious Wrigley’s Spearmint Chewing Gum. There’s lots of cooling real-mint flavor in every stick, and chewing Wrigley’s Spearmint helps keep you feeling fresh and alert. You feel better, work better, get more fun out of doing things. So indoors, outdoors, wherever you go, keep some healthful, refreshing Wrigley’s Spearmint Chewing Gum handy. To make every day more enjoyable, treat yourself often to delicious Wrigley’s Spearmint Chewing Gum.”

A related post
“Delicious Chewing Gum” (A 1941 advertisement)

The perfect writing font(s)

From the iA Writer blog: “In search of the perfect writing font.” The argument therein for a monospaced font is just one example of the thoughtfulness behind iA Writer, whose creators understand that writing is not word-processing. The app now comes with three monospaced fonts.

Related posts
“Writing is not word-processing” : Rough drafts and finished products

[In my mind, word-processing takes a hyphen. Always has, always will.]

Twelve movies

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers.]

Inner Sanctum (dir. Lew Landers, 1948). With no obvious relation to the radio drama: it’s a B-movie that starts weird — strangers on a train, one of whom seems to be a seer (Fritz Leiber) — and it gets weirder quickly. A man kills his fiancée, stashes her body on an outgoing train, and takes a room in a boarding house, where he’ll be stuck as long as a nearby river is flooded. Arch heterosexual dialogue, a vague gay subtext, and Billy House as a newspaper reporter, editor, and publisher. The poor prints available on YouTube make it easy to give up on this one, but the twist at the end is worth waiting for. ★★★

*

Slander (dir. Roy Rowland, 1957). Steve Cochran is H.R. Manley, the dapper publisher of the scandal rag Real Truth, “the only magazine that dares to publish all of it!” — which means that the movie should be titled Libel, but no matter. When Manley pressures TV-puppeteer Scott Martin (Van Johnson) to reveal some old dirt about a famed stage actress or face the publication of a scandal from his own past, events begin to move in dark and dangerous directions. Marjorie Rambeau steals the movie as Manley’s agonizing, hard-drinking mother. This modest effort would pair well with the much splashier Sweet Smell of Success. ★★★

*

Libel (dir. Anthony Asquith, 1959). A glimpse of a television in a London bar prompts a WWII veteran (Paul Massie) to investigate the identity of Sir Mark Loddon (Dirk Bogarde), a fellow POW. Is “Sir Mark” an impostor who’s taken a dead man’s place? Brilliant performances from Bogarde (you’ll have to watch to understand), and from Olivia de Havilland as Lady Margaret, Sir Mark’s uncertain wife. The ending is an utter surprise. ★★★★

*

The 13th Letter (dir. Otto Preminger, 1951). In a small Quebec town, a handsome new doctor (Michael Rennie) is receiving threatening letters accusing him of an affair with the young wife (Constance Smith) of an older doctor (Charles Boyer). Other townspeople are receiving threatening letters too. Is a bedridden woman (Linda Darnell) with eyes for the young doctor “the scarlet pen”? A moody, northern noir. ★★★

*

Dangerous Afternoon (dir. Charles Saunders, 1961). Louisa (Nora Nicholson) runs a boarding house for friends who have fallen on hard times: all older women, all criminals. A quirky, funny, not-funny story of blackmail, murder, and family secrets. Louisa’s niece Freda (Joanna Dunham), Freda’s fiancé, the couple’s friends, and a record player give us a glimpse of a non-criminal younger generation. And dig the shopping scenes that begin the movie. ★★★★

*

Scarface (dir. Howard Hawks, 1932). Almost ninety years later, this pre-Code story of bootlegging and unhinged gangland violence remains shocking: it’s not every movie that has thugs with machine guns going from hospital room to hospital room looking for their target. Paul Muni chews up considerable scenery as the Capone-like Tony Camonte, a feral lieutenant who strives and succeeds in becoming the boss of all things Chicago. More compelling performances come from Ann Dvorak as Tony’s young sister Cesca, Karen Morley as Poppy, the object of several criminals’ interest, George Raft as a coin-flipping henchman, and Vince Barnett as an illiterate secretary whose efforts to master the protocol of telephone messages add comedy and pathos to the proceedings. My favorite moment: Ann Dvorak dances, and George Raft — known as a gifted dancer — can’t dance back. ★★★★

*

Midnight (dir. Mitchell Leisen, 1939). A wonderful comedy, with a screenplay by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder and a generous application of the Lubitsch touch. Claudette Colbert stars as Eve Peabody, American showgirl, down and out in Paris. Through a series of fortunate events, she assumes the identity of “Baroness Czerny,” a Hungarian noble, and agrees to help John Barrymore break up his wife’s (Mary Astor) affair with a dashing young man (Francis Lederer). Meanwhile, a genuine Hungarian, taxi driver Tibor Czerny (Don Ameche), who fell instantly in love with Eve when he gave her a ride, is searching the city to find her. The funniest scene: breakfast and its complications. ★★★★

*

Strange Impersonation (dir. Anthony Mann, 1946). The director’s name was the lure here. The plot of this B-movie is sheer insanity: a “girl scientist,” as the newspapers call her, at work on a new anesthetic (Brenda Goodrich), a frenemy in the lab (Hillary Brooke), a schlub of a fellow scientist (William Gargan), a sketchy dame seeking payback for a minor traffic accident (Ruth Ford), and, around the edges of things, an ambulance chaser’s ambulance chaser (George Chandler, Uncle Petrie of Lassie). Elements of the story look forward to Dark Passage, but the ending here is a strange disappointment. My favorite scene: the clash of cultures in the apartment above Joe’s Bar and Grill. ★★★

*

Address Unknown (dir. William Cameron Menzies, 1944). Paul Lukas and Morris Carnovksy (eerily resembling Stefan Zweig and Joseph Roth) are partners in Schulz–Eisenstein Galleries, San Francisco and Munich. When Martin Schulz (Lukas) moves back to cosmopolitan Munich, he has no idea of the futures that await him, his family, and his partner’s daughter, an aspiring actress (K.T. Stevens). A chilling picture of compromise and resistance as a totalitarian order takes shape, with appropriately stark cinematography by Rudolph Maté. From a short epistolary novel by Katherine Kressmann Taylor that’s now on my to-read list. ★★★★

*

La Cérémonie (dir. Claude Chabrol, 1995). Invite friends to pick a movie from the Criterion Channel, and you never know what you’re going to get. This movie is unsettling from its first minutes, when spooky music accompanies the arrival of a new maid at a remote country manor. At the center of the drama: the maid (Sandrine Bonnaire), the lady of the house (Jacqueline Bisset), and a free-spirited postmistress (Isabelle Huppert). It’s easy to guess one secret early on: others are unfathomable. There’s a final surprise as the credits roll. ★★★★

*

The Arnelo Affair (dir. Arch Oboler, 1947). Further proof that not every movie from this year is a absolute winner. Frances Gifford is a neglected wife with a workaholic-lawyer for a husband (George Murphy); John Hodiak is the vaguely Vincent Price-like nightclub owner who complicates their marriage. It’s a bit like Brief Encounter (retrospective voiceover) with a murder added and most of the passion subtracted. Eve Arden adds comic relief and pizzazz as an arch dress designer: “Just give me a plate of bacon and eggs, a full pocketbook, a chinchilla coat and a man, and I’m happy.” ★★

*

Another Man’s Poison (dir. Irving Rapper, 1951). From a play by Leslie Sands. Bette Davis, playing a mystery novelist living in a great English country house, has problems on her hands: a dead husband to dispose of, a criminal (Gary Merrill) now living with her and posing as her husband, and the impending marriage of her young lover to her secretary. Starts well, with good performances from (the married) Davis and Merrill, but the story becomes mired in contrivance and staginess. It’s the kind of story in which the horse’s name is Fury. ★★

Related reading
All OCA movie posts (Pinboard)

[Sources: Criterion Channel, TCM, YouTube.]

“Too late”

This account of hospital life from Alabama doctor Brytney Cobia needs to be widely shared:

I’m admitting young healthy people to the hospital with very serious COVID infections. One of the last things they do before they’re intubated is beg me for the vaccine. I hold their hand and tell them that I’m sorry, but it’s too late. A few days later when I call time of death, I hug their family members and I tell them the best way to honor their loved one is to go get vaccinated and encourage everyone they know to do the same. They cry. And they tell me they didn’t know. They thought it was a hoax. They thought it was political. They thought because they had a certain blood type or a certain skin color they wouldn’t get as sick. They thought it was “just the flu.” But they were wrong. And they wish they could go back. But they can’t. So they thank me and they go get the vaccine. And I go back to my office, write their death note, and say a small prayer that this loss will save more lives.

Here’s an article about Dr. Cobia and COVID in Alabama.