Orange Crate Art

Friday, December 24, 2021

Sondheim with a Blackwing

[From Original Cast Album: “Company” (dir. D.A. Pennebaker, 1970). Click either image for a larger view.]

There’s Stephen Sondheim with an Eberhard Faber Blackwing pencil, his pencil of choice. Sondheim’s affection for the Eberhard Faber Blackwing — and for thirty-two-line yellow legal pads — is well known.

Note to a pencil company known, infamously, for its shameless and unacknowledged appropriation of other people’s work: Orange Crate Art is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. If you want images for commercial purposes, get a Criterion Channel subscription and get them yourself. And then see if the Pennebaker and Sondheim estates take kindly to what you’ve done.

Again, Sondheim is using an Eberhard Faber Blackwing, not a twenty-first-century replica.

I post these images in memory of my friend Sean Malone, the most dedicated and knowledgable Blackwing user ever known (and whose work was shamelessly appropriated by a certain pencil company). Sean’s website Blackwing Pages has many references to Sondheim. I would like to have been able to send these images Sean’s way. Perhaps I have.

Related reading
All OCA Blackwing posts and Sondheim posts (Pinboard) : Sondheim’s writing habits

Domestic comedy

[Watching the news.]

“She has the same glasses. But they look better on me.”

[Laughter.]

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

[It’s true: they do.]

Thursday, December 23, 2021

Streets

The New York Times, earlier today, in an obituary for Franklin A. Thomas, former president of the Ford Foundation, and the first Black person to head a major American philanthropy: “He rose from working-class Brooklyn,” &c.

The PBS NewsHour, tonight, in a seconds-long obituary: “He rose from the streets of working-class Brooklyn,” &c.

Ah, yes, “the streets.” A cheap — not to mention insulting — cliché. Not even the sidewalks?

The Times obituary notes that Thomas was born in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, and “grew up in a tight-knit family of immigrants from Barbados.”

Joan Didion (1934–2021)

Joan Didion, “On Keeping a Notebook,” in Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968).

The New York Times has an obituary.

A pocket notebook sighting

[From Young and Innocent (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1937). Click for a larger notebook.]

Young Robert Tisdall (Derrick De Marney) must be innocent: on the run from the police, he still takes the time to write a nice note to his helper, Erica Burgoyne (Nova Pilbeam).

More notebook sightings
All the King’s Men : Angels with Dirty Faces : The Bad and the Beautiful : Ball of Fire : The Big Clock : Bombshell : The Brasher Doubloon : The Case of the Howling Dog : Cat People : Caught : City Girl : Crossing Delancey : Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne : Dead End : Deep Valley : The Devil and Miss Jones : Dragnet : Extras : Eyes in the Night : The Face Behind the Mask : Foreign Correspondent : Fury : Homicide : The Honeymooners : The House on 92nd Street : I See a Dark Stranger : Journal d’un curé de campagne : Kid Glove Killer : The Last Laugh : Le Million : The Lodger : Ministry of Fear : Mr. Holmes : Murder at the Vanities : Murder by Contract : Murder, Inc. : The Mystery of the Wax Museum : Naked City : The Naked Edge : Now, Voyager : The Palm Beach Story : Perry Mason : Pickpocket : Pickup on South Street : Pushover : Quai des Orfèvres : The Racket : Railroaded! : Red-Headed Woman : Rififi : La roue : Route 66 : The Scarlet Claw : Sleeping Car to Trieste : The Small Back Room : The Sopranos : Spellbound : Stage Fright : State Fair : A Stranger in Town : Stranger Things : Sweet Smell of Success : Time Table : T-Men : To the Ends of the Earth : 20th Century Women : Union Station : Vice Squad : Walk East on Beacon! : Where the Sidewalk Ends : The Woman in the Window : You Only Live Once

A Hamilton House menu

Here’s a five-page menu from the Hamilton House. Quite an array of choices, for an earlier American palate. Cold jellied tomato consomme, anyone? Anyone?

Related posts
10031 Fourth Avenue, Brooklyn : Hamilton House cheesecake : Hamilton House green beans : A Hamilton House postcard

[The Hamilton House was a memorable restaurant of my Brooklyn childhood. The menu is, I think, from well before my time. Thanks to the reader who found it.]

Wednesday, December 22, 2021

Bounce, no bounce

I was with my mom in the waiting room of a medical facility this afternoon. As I was getting her settled, I noticed a man and woman sitting across from us, the man with his mask under his nose. It’s a familiar look in these parts.

“Sir,” I said, “would you please pull your mask up over your nose? I’d feel a lot more comfortable.”

He looked at me and obliged. And then he got up and walked away, followed by the woman, who appeared to have no say in the matter.

“We better leave before I bounce him like a rock,” the man said, loud enough for me to hear. But I didn’t hear a thing. The man and woman went to stand outside, on the 30℉-ish prairie, rather than sit inside wearing proper masks. Someone would call them when it was time.

I did not bounce. If anyone bounced, this man did, followed by the woman, who appeared to have no say in the matter.

[This is not a dream post.]