Mongol sighting

[Elizabeth Wilson as Dr. Anna Willson, Cliff Robertson as Lee Tucker. From Man on a Swing (dir. Frank Perry, 1974). Click either image for a larger view.]

Elizabeth Wilson might be recognizable as “Mrs. Braddock” (no first name), Ben’s mother in The Graduate. A Mongol pencil is always recognizable as itself.

Related reading
All OCA Mongol pencil posts (Pinboard)

“”Think metric!”

[Peanuts, October 18, 1974.]

Peppermint Patty’s reaction to Franklin’s whisper: “AAUGHH!”

Wikipedia notes that “the International System of Units has been adopted as the official system of weights and measures by all nations in the world except for Myanmar, Liberia, and the United States.” Yesterday’s Peanuts truly is today’s Peanuts.

I’m not sure how the sequencing works, but there may be a Sunday “Think Metric” Peanuts coming in the near near future.

Related reading
All OCA Peanuts posts (Pinboard)

A notebook and a pencil

When Gary Paulsen was a teenager, a librarian gave him a library card, then a book a month, then a book a week, and then a Scripto notebook and a no. 2 pencil:

“She said, you should write down some of your thought pictures, which I called them, you know. I said, who — for who? And she said, me. None of this would have happened except for that.”

Gary Paulsen died earlier this week. NPR has an obituary: “Beloved children’s author and wilderness enthusiast Gary Paulsen has died at 82.” And here is the conversation I’ve quoted from.

I’d never heard of Paulsen before today. Now two copies of Hatchet are on the way to our house.

Thanks, Ben.

What is a straight wire?

Or was.

People in old movies are always sending their telegrams straight wire. The term comes up, for instance, in the opening scene of Executive Suite (dir. Robert Wise, 1954), which must be the greatest telegram scene in film, with a clerk counting the words and making change. Neither Webster’s Second nor Third has a definition. Nor does Wikipedia’s article on telegrams. But look:

[Click for a larger explanation.]

This explanation appears in a handbook of questions and answers about third-class mail, created by Harry J. Maginnis, Executive Manager, Associated Third Class Mail Users. It formed part of Maginnis’s testimony before a Senate subcommittee (Postal Policy: Hearings Before a Senate Subcommittee of the Committee on the Post Office and Civil Service, 85th Congress, 1st session, 1957).

Once again, it’s Google Books FTW.

A related post
How to send telegrams

[$2.70 in 1957 = $26.36 in 2021. Mighty expensive words.]

Lloyd Nolan

He was an actor: Lloyd Nolan.

Not Norman Lloyd. Not Lloyd Bridges. Lloyd Nolan.

And the more often I type his first name, the odder it looks. How must have he and the other Lloyds have felt?

Red Cars

[Hell Bound (dir. William J. Hole Jr., 1957). Click for a larger view.]

The extraordinary final minutes of this movie, shot on Los Angeles’s Terminal Island, include sweeeping views of junked streetcars. They are the Red Cars of the Pacific Electric Railway. So much for that great mass-transit system.

Also from this movie
A Ticonderoga sighting

Ticonderoga sighting

Just another day at the office: a Hawaiian travel brochure, drugs, and a Dixon Ticonderoga for jotting down appointments. If you squint, you can almost make out the name.

[Hell Bound (dir. William J. Hole Jr., 1957). Click either image for a larger view.]

More Ticonderoga sightings
The Dick Van Dyke Show : Force of Evil : The House on 92nd Street : Lassie : Lassie again : Perry Mason : Since You Went Away

It’s Ciattarelli, dammit

As a one-time New Jersey resident, I feel compelled to bring this matter to your attention. In 1994, Jack Ciattarelli, now the Republican candidate for governor of the state, did indeed attempt to ban cursing in the borough of Raritan. Talk about cancel culture.

As Elaine observes, Ciattarelli was pretty clearly overcompensating. Because thinggaboudit: if your last name is Ciattarelli (first syllable pronounced “chit”), whadda the other kids gonna call you? And if your last name is Ciattarelli and your first name is Jack — what then?

Says I, don’t cancel cursing. Change your name!

“This is not a sandwich”

[The Naked Road (dir. William Martin, 1959). Click for larger representations.]

The crudely scissored pictures of sandwiches on the wall are supposed to signify restaurant. But they’re whispering among themselves (after Magritte): “This is not a sandwich.” “Me neither.” “Nor I.”

The Naked Road is a low-budget affair.

Domestic comedy

“That guy looks familiar. Everyone on this show looks familiar.”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

[The show was Murder, She Wrote. Familiar faces in new arrangements.]