I didn’t think about it until later in the day: the name Troy Schlitz in yesterday’s Zippy references The Beer That Made Milwaukee Famous. Ah, thought I, like Plutowater, Vitabrush, and Troy, Schlitz is yet another thing of the past, right? Wrong — it’s still being brewed. But this serving tray, which belonged to my mom and dad, is a thing of the past. Did it see any use? Doubtful.
I like the mid-century modern (1957) cartooning. But jeez, it’s a white, white, white, white world. As is, too, the world of this one-off two-page spread in Life :
No name on the tray. The signature on the advertisement: Joe Kaufman. I suspect that the tray is the work of a different artist.
[A jingle in A flat? Why A flat? To keep out the common people?]
Tuesday, February 1, 2022
Schlitzerland
“Why Simple Is Smart”
Derek Thompson, who coined the terms workism, hygiene theater, and everything shortage, offers advice for writing nonfiction: “Why Simple Is Smart” (The Atlantic ).
[Simple can also be stupid and dangerous. But notice that Thompson is writing about expressing complex ideas.]
The Times buys Wordle
The New York Times has bought Wordle: “Wordle was acquired from its creator, Josh Wardle, a software engineer in Brooklyn, for a price ‘in the low seven figures,’ the Times said. The company said the game would initially remain free to new and existing players.”
“Initially remain free”: oh sure, but not for long.
Monday, January 31, 2022
Pluto Water and Vitabrush
It so happens that my favorite comic strips sometimes require footnotes. In today’s Zippy, Dizzy Plutowater resigns from his old life: “I’m now Troy Schlitz and I work night shift at th’ Vitabrush factory over in Kenosha.”
As Zippy might say, “Yow!”
Louis Armstrong was a devotee of Pluto Water before switching over to Swiss Kriss. Some details here. And dig the caption for this photograph of Armstrong: “His pluto water [sic] has brought him back to top shape.”
Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)
[“The bald-headed row”? It’s an idiom.]
“Fast to my pocket”
Kids don’t talk like that anymore.
Merriam-Webster has this definition, among others: “securely attached,” as in “a rope fast to the wharf.” Or “a dollar bill fast to a pocket.”
Nancy, of course, devises a way to free the dollar and get her soda.
Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)
Sunday, January 30, 2022
Tiny Diner
“Good Food for Good Health”? If you say so.
If you squint, you can see the HOTCAKES sign (neon!) in the window. And in the window of the dry cleaners and laundry, SPREADS WASHED FLUFFED DRIED. Today this stretch of Bedford Avenue is all apartment buildings.
Thanks, Brian, for finding this photograph.
Related posts
Harry’s Wagon : More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives
Saturday, January 29, 2022
Recently updated
Nick DeMaio and the Eldorado Now with a photograph of a BAR sign, salvaged by Fordham students after the El D’s destruction.
Today’s Saturday Stumper
Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Greg Johnson, gave me half an hour’s worth of struggle. It’s a great puzzle, with many unusual (and educational!) answers, and real Stumping satisfaction. Even as I typed in my final answer, for 24-A, three letters, “Needle point,” I couldn’t see how things were going to turn out right. But they did. Two hours after I finished the puzzle, the point of 24-A poked me in the head — ah, got it.
Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:
1-A, nine letters, “Paint-sprayer reservoir.” See? Unusual.
13-D, four letters:“Former name of the Royal Crown Company.” I learned something.
A trio: 20-A, nine letters, “Concision catchphrase, part 1”; 38-A, three letters, “Concision catchphrase, part 2”; 48-A, nine letters, “Concision catchphrase, part 3.” I kept thinking that there had to be more to the extended answer than met the eye. Perhaps there's a joke in the three-letter-long middle.
21-D, four letters, “Brit remembered for his circles.” A Brit? I learned something.
33-D, five letters, “Rounds of belts.” Is there an arcane term for the holes in a belt? Because that was my first thought.
39-A, five letters, “Two-stroke symbol.” I thought Golf?
41-A, ten letters, “‘Ultra-warm’ apparel.” Okay, but why quotation marks? If there’s a joke here, I’m missing it.
41-D, four letters, “Response to a request to speak.” Aww.
44-D, six letters, “Medicated disc.” I learned something. And there’s a surprising link to a word I already knew.
45-A, six letters, “Close ones.” Again I learned something.
46-A, three letters, “Moving away.” The clue adds value to the answer.
48-D, four letters, “New sister, often.” I was thinking of a novitiate, which does, after all, kinda fit.
53-A, five letters, “Retouch before advancement.” Nice misdirection, at least if the word advancement makes you think of careers and résumés.
No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.
Friday, January 28, 2022
Composition of place
George Bodmer pointed me to a beautiful piece of short fiction in The New Yorker, Arthur Krystal’s “What’s the Deal, Hummingbird?” It’s a story of moments remembered in COVID times:
By August, 2020, his sense of time had gone kablooey. Events thirty years in the distance now knocked at the door, while things he’d done five weeks earlier seemed impossibly remote.I wrote back to George:
I find myself these days recalling not so much moments as spaces. The layout of my grandparents’ house, my other grandparents’ apartment, libraries from childhood in Brooklyn and adolescence in NJ, college buildings. It must be that so much time spent in one place is making me travel in my head to others.And now I realize that I’m engaging in a secular version of a spiritual exercise from Ignatius of Loyola: composition of place. I’ve also been traveling to the candy stores of my Brooklyn childhood via the New York City Municipal Archives.
I wonder if readers have found themselves doing such traveling in COVID times. Anyone?
[Just what was behind that locked door at the end of the second-floor hallway in the Fordham library? I’ll never know.]
Pencil vs. pencil vs. pencil vs. pen
Which lasts longer: a cheap pencil, a better pencil, a mechanical pencil, or a ballpoint pen? It’s the work of a fellow with time on his hands.
A related post
“2,162 words for one cent”
