From Harriet Craig (dir. Vincent Sherman, 1950). Harriet (Joan Crawford) to her husband Walter (Wendell Corey):
“Walter, maybe you’d better not call me. Heaven knows where I’ll be from minute to minute. But I can always reach you. And if you’re not at home or the office, you will leave word where you are, won’t you?”He could never have imagined.
“I’ll carry a phone around with me.”
Mater, by Jason Long: “a simple and purty menu bar Pomodoro app” (free) for Linux, macOS, and Windows. Perhaps too simple for some users, just twenty-five minutes, then five, with no other settings and no pausing. (I’d prefer a three-minute break.)
But I like the box in the menu bar, looking like a calendar page or scale: to my mind, it’s a better choice than a display that shows time running down by the second.
Three related posts
The Pomodoro Technique Illustrated : Flow : Pomotroid
[Linen texture, 2 1/2 x 3 1/2 in. From Digital Commonwealth: Massachusetts Collections Online. Click either image for a larger view.]
The text accompanying the postcard says “c. 1930–1945.” But we know from this tax photograph of 10031 4th Avenue that the Hamilton House could not have been at this location before 1939.
Thanks to an indefatigible librarian for finding this postcard.
Related posts
Green beans and the Hamilton House : Hamilton House cheesecake
The Guardian reports on the publication of John Steinbeck’s handwritten manuscript of The Grapes of Wrath. At the start is the reminder “Big Writing,” to keep things legible for Carol Steinbeck, who was typing. But the writing gets smaller along the way.
Related posts
Fambly : Steinbeck on the Blackwing pencil : Steinbeck on migrant camps : Steinbeck’s Salinas
And from pencil talk: Steinbeck’s favorite pencils.
“In the mid-nineteen-eighties I made six to eight of these delicious cheesecakes every Monday morning during my time as executive chef at the Hamilton House Restaurant in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, New York”: from chef Monte M., the recipe for Hamilton House cheesecake.
Thanks to an indefatigible librarian for finding this recipe.
Related posts
10031 4th Avenue : Green beans and the Hamilton House
Two tunes, “God Only Knows” and “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” have now been released from the forthcoming Brian Wilson album At My Piano. I have five thoughts:
~ The performances aren’t especially interesting. They remind me — much too much — of the wallpapery piano music I hear in our nearby antiques mall. Pleasant, but I wouldn’t want to pay to listen.
~ The piano sounds odd, as if it’s been run through a filter and an echo chamber.
~ Given Brian’s typical approach to the piano — pounding chords — I find it almost impossible to imagine that these performances are of his creation. And given recent evidence of his pianism (for example), I find it almost impossible to imagine that these performances are of his creation. Again, it’s not that the playing is especially interesting: it just doesn’t sound to me like what Brian Wilson might be doing at a piano.
~ And these performances at times are what no one person could be doing at a piano. Listen for yourself: there is sometimes a third hand.
~ The Brian Wilson website has nothing in the way of video to go with this recording, an omission that seems telling. I would love to see Brian playing what I’m hearing and feel foolish for having been skeptical. But for now I will stick with my suspicion that these performances have been engineered and assembled. I think there’s more and less here than meets the ear — more than Brian Wilson at his piano and less than Brian Wilson at his piano.
Related reading
All OCA Brian Wilson posts (Pinboard)
[There are some poets and musicians I have to call by their first names. Ted Berrigan is one. Brian Wilson is another.]
The telephone directory, informally known as the ’phone book, allows the user to look up the name of a person or business and find their number. Ah — there’s Mr. Passmore’s number.
But the telephone company’s directory allows the user to look up a number and find the name of a person or business. Ah — there’s Mr. Craig’s name.
[From Craig’s Wife (dir. Dorothy Arzner, 1936). Click either image for a larger view.]
Someday I’m sure I’ll tire of seeing exchange names on screen. But not yet.
And, yes, ’phone is slang, or was.
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 : Escape in the Fog : 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) : Naked City (9) : 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 (1) : Sweet Smell of Success (2) : Tension : This Gun for Hire : The Unfaithful : Vice Squad : Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
Anyone who doubts that music is “the quickening art,” as Oliver Sacks, borrowing from Kant, put it, would do well to watch last night’s 60 Minutes story about Tony Bennett, “The Final Act.” You’ll need to disable your adblocker to watch.
Related posts
“I have to sing” : On practicing : “Sweet Lorraine” : Tony Bennett’s pencil : “We’re all here”
[From The Garment Jungle (dir. Vincent Sherman, 1957). Click for a larger view.]
ILGWU: the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. This sign stays on the screen long enough for the viewer to get the point: “where once the slums and sweat shops flourished.” Yes, the ILGWU created housing for its members.
I remember the song “Look for the Union Label” in television commercials from childhood. I remember it — perhaps accurately, perhaps not — as being sung by women. (There were several versions.) It was only when watching The Garment Jungle that I understood that though ILGWU membership was largely female, the members made ladies’ garments.
Also from The Garment Jungle
Park Avenue and E. 102nd Street
The ding of recognition dinged when we were watching The Garment Jungle (dir. Vincent Sherman, 1957). The wall, the underpass — that had to be Park Avenue. Train tracks run above. We walked through an underpass several years ago with our friends Luanne and Jim, on our way to and from the Museum of the City of New York. Here, look, then and now (the now courtesy of Google Maps):
[Click any image for a larger view.]
[The underpass for vehicles is flanked by two smaller ones for pedestrians.]
[Now with air conditioners and fire escapes.]
The underpass (one of eight) is at 102nd Street. The traffic pattern has changed since 1957. But if you look at the doorways and windows and the Carver Houses in the distance, you can see that it’s the same street. Bonus: the 1957 scene gives us the stuff of the city: stickball, an ice-cream man, a horse-drawn cart (notice the bells), people sitting on the stoop or looking out windows at a movie being made.
The Garment Jungle is a terrific movie, now streaming at the Criterion Channel.
