A mail chute in the movies

[From Nazi Agent (dir. Jules Dassin, 1942). Click for a larger view.]

This mail chute filled the screen. The florid handwriting, which belongs to a courtly stamp and rare-book dealer, fits.

This post is for my friend Diane, who has quite a (virtual) collection of mail chutes from real life. Diane’s attention to mail chutes got me looking at them too.

Doris Miller and democracy

“I hear a lot these days about how American democracy is doomed and the reactionaries will win. Maybe. But the beauty of our system is that it gives us people like Doris Miller”: from the December 7 installment of Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American.

Pronouncing omicron

From The Wall Street Journal : “However You Pronounce ‘Omicron,’ You’re Probably Saying It Wrong.”

I go with this pronunciation: \ ˈä-mə-ˌkrän \, which is the way Dr. Anthony Fauci pronounces the word. Dr. Fauci, as you may already know, majored in classics. That doesn’t mean his pronunciation is the correct one. He may be making the word more easily intelligble for American ears.

A related post
How to pronounce omicron

[Yes, the COVID-19 variant is capitalized. But it’s the name of a Greek letter that we’re pronouncing.]

Chock full o’Nuts sighting

[Terry (Geraldine Brooks) and John (George Montgomery) and coffee. From Street of Sinners (dir. William Berke, 1957). Click for a larger view.]

That’s a can of Chock full o’Nuts, immediately recognizable, even in blurry black and white. Here’s a can in color.

Related reading
All OCA Chock full o’Nuts posts (Pinboard)

The non-breaking hyphen

I saw something odd when previewing a recent post:

A modern rule might be formulated thus: when the -
ing (present) participle has the force of a noun, it preferably takes a possessive subject, especially in formal contexts.

It was time to look for a non-breaking hyphen. And one exists: ‑. Behold:

A modern rule might be formulated thus: when the ‑ing (present) participle has the force of a noun, it preferably takes a possessive subject, especially in formal contexts.

The detached hyphen seems to be a sometime thing, a matter of device or browser or font or some combination thereof — or perhaps it’s just the magic of Blogger. In the sentence from Garner’s Modern English Usage that I’ve quoted here, the hyphen sometimes detached itself and sometimes stayed put. Here, for the sake of the example, I’ve detached the hyphen by means of a line break.

A related post
Looking for a non-breaking thin space

Recently updated

Words of the year Now with allyship.

Heebie-jeebies

“The geek — he’s got the heebie-jeebies again”: a great line from Nightmare Alley (dir. Edmund Goulding, 1947), on TCM now.

A related post
“GEEK WANTED IMMEDIATELY”

Hallmark Holiday Movie Bot

Some are funnier than others, but for some reason, they all follow a pattern: Hallmark Holiday Movie Bot.

A little Hallmark nonsense

[Click for a larger view.]

This dialogue took shape as Elaine and I sat at the kitchen table holding cups of imaginary cocoa with both hands, Hallmark style. I took it upon myself to improvise some more in writing.

To the best of my knowledge, “skyldig till anklagelsen” is good Swedish for “guilty as charged.” Looking at previous posts about Hallmark movies, I now see to my astonishment one from 2020 that quotes “Guilty as charged!” as a line of cringe-worthy dialogue. Did that line lodge in my memory for later use?

I have no idea what this scene may portend. But I fear that He and She are about to stumble onto something like the Swedish original for Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.” That’s not very Hallmark of me.

A few more Hallmark posts
“Double-extra whipped cream” : Hallmark hypercorrection : Hallmark and Prufrock : Hallmark rising : Hallmark trees : The Hallmark Zone : Instant Hallmark

Another Brooklyn candy store

[4302 12th Avenue, Brooklyn, New York, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

One block up and one block over from us, this candy store was still standing in the 1960s, when it was called Pup’s, or Pup’s Luncheontte. The Pup’s of my childhood seemed to be something of a dive, a hangout, a joint. I think the Horton’s privilege sign was then long gone. I have a vague memory of buying a pretzel rod from a container on the counter. By the 1980s, Pup's had been converted for residential use.

Thanks, Brian, for finding this joint.

*

December 12: A comment on the public Facebook group Old Boro Park mentions a story that the name was supposed to be Pops but was misspelled. Another comment mentions Pup’s as appearing in Saturday Night Fever (dir. John Badham, 1977). It doesn’t. But in the movie, a car crashes for revenge into the large building right next to Pup’s, 4304–08 12th Avenue. You can see that building in these two tax photographs: 1, 2. In the movie you can see the original PUBLIC MARKET lettering, covered up in the earlier tax photo, partly covered in the later tax photo, covered up again in recent years.

After the crash and the fight that follows, Tony and company drive off on 43rd Street, going the wrong way on a one-way street. (Hey, it’s a movie.) You can see the intersection of 12th and 43rd in Google Maps.

Four more candy stores
4417 New Utrecht Avenue : 4319 13th Avenue : 94 Nassau Street : 4223 Fort Hamilton Parkway