Noir filter

[Click for a larger view.]

Elaine and I went on a walk after sunset last night. When I saw these street-light-lit student apartments and the strong shadows, I thought film noir? and took a picture. When I browsed the phone’s filters to turn the picture black and white, I found that the filter I wanted is called Noir. But I think it could just as plausibly be called Horror.

And now I am seeing this image as a still from a cheap, grainy, imaginary horror movie: Stairway to Terror. God knows what’s at the top of those stairs. I didn’t want to get any closer.

Zippy’s thesaurus

In today’s Zippy, a thesaurus. See also April 9, 1921. See also this OCA post, Beware of the saurus.

[It matters not that ‑saurus and thesaurus are unrelated.]

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Matthew Sewell, is the most difficult Stumper in memory, or at least in my memory. Forty-five minutes last night, another fifty this morning.

This post is a placeholder. There is work to be done, to be done, to get set for the rest of the day. I’ll post some choice clues with comments later today.

*

And here they are:

5-D, ten letters, “Look before you leap.” Nifty.

5-A, eight letters, “What often accompanies a barbershop soloist.” I was thinking of background harmonies.

18-A, three letters, “Background figures.” A killer clue.

24-A, five letters, “Put one’s thumbs down, say.” I thought of a butcher and a scale.

21-D, three letters, “Bridesmaid duo.” Grr.

28-D, ten letters, “One on a panel.” I had to get my head out of academia, and I did.

33-D, five letters, “They can be used to find roots.” I was thinking about DNA tests.

36-D, three letters, “Document placeholder.” I know the newspaper abbreviation TK (“to come”), but this one is new to me.

37-D, eight letters, “Visually striking marine cavern.” I learned something that I hope never to put into use.

40-A, six letters, “Choice words.” My first thought was ABCORD, but A, B, C, and D aren’t really words.

34-A, fifteen letters, “What a trimmer might maintain.” Took me longer than any other clue, perhaps because I take exception to what’s being maintained here, or what it might be called.

43-D, six letters, “Uncle’s relative.” Nice misdirection.

57-A, fourteen letters, “Commencement accelerators.” STARTINGPISTOLS doesn’t fit.

59-D, three letters, “College class suffix.” A bit ridic. My first guess was IOI, or one-oh-one, which would also be ridic.

60-A, eight letters, “Abe Lincoln, as a teen.” My start in the puzzle, in the bottom row.

61-A, five letters, “Boarding announcement.” Clever.

My favorite clue in this puzzle: 39-D, eight letters, “Reasons to ask, ‘What was I thinking?’”

What am I thinking? That this might be the best Saturday Stumper ever. A Christmas gift!

No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.

Christmas 1821 in 1921 in 2021

In 1921, a New York Times writer looked at old newspapers to write about Christmas a century before.

[F.A. Collins, “Christmas a Century Ago: Holiday Gifts Which Pleased New Yorkers in 1821 — Vogue of ‘Vernacular Cards.’” The New York Times, December 25, 1921.]

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it.

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.]

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.]