Melania Trump’s NFTs (non-fungible tokens) of photographs from a defeated former president’s mad reign seem to be not exactly NFTs. The lady with the hat is selling 10,000 NFTs of photographs at $50 a pop. But wait: those 10,000 photographs aren’t 10,000 unique photographs (taken by taxpayer-paid White House photographers?). They’re copies of ten photographs, 250 to 1500 copies of each.
Forbes says that NFTs are “generally one of a kind, or at least one of a very limited run.” I think I know enough to know that 1000 copies is a rather large number for an NFT. The number of suckers in the world is larger still.
And multiple purchases are possible for anyone who wants to own the set of ten. A thought: would it be beyond this grifting helpmeet’s helpers to purchase all 250 copies of the “rarest” of these faux-NFTs to resell (greyly, greyly) at higher prices? 250 × $50 = $12,500. A mere bag of shells. Think of the possible return on investment.
She’s already bought back her hat.
[Pfft : “used to signify sarcasm or disagreement.”]
Friday, February 18, 2022
Pfft
“A dustbin of scraps”
Organist and choirmaster Humphrey Cobbler has figured out something about Hector Mackilwraith, teacher of mathematics.
Tempest-Tost is the first novel of Davies’s Salterton Trilogy.
Related reading
All OCA Robertson Davies posts (Pinboard)
Counting on Brooklyn
I was walking down an avenue in Manhattan, past a Woolworth’s. And old woman (kerchief, gloves) sidled up to me and said, “They rely on Brooklyn for everything, don’t they? They count on Brooklyn to buy all the candy.”
I agreed. And I added, “I love Brooklyn.”
Related reading
All OCA dream posts (Pinboard)
[Inspired, no doubt, by thinking about the candy stores of my youth. For instance.]
Thursday, February 17, 2022
Two books by Jerry Craft
Jerry Craft, New Kid (New York: Harper, 2019) and Class Act (New York: HarperAlley, 2020).
“Oh, Jordan, graphic novels aren’t real books!”
Miss Brickner, librarian,
Riverdale Academy Day School
Jordan is Jordan Banks, from Washington Heights, an artist/cartoonist and new kid starting “first form” (seventh grade) at Riverdale. He has his heart set on the High School of Art, Music, and Mime, but, well, parents. Jordan’s mom Ellice, who works in publishing, dotes on her twelve-year-old son (her “little sweet potato”) and wants him to attend an academically elite school. Jordan’s dad Chuck, who runs a community center, is willing to give Riverdale a try. The family is Black, and Jordan will be one of a handful of students of color at Riverdale, a school, he tells us, that’s “in a section of the city that’s so fancy, its residents refuse to admit that it’s actually a part of the Bronx.” And yes, there’s an Archie Comics joke along the way, in one of the two-page sketchbook comics in Jordan’s hand that punctuate the narrative.
New Kid and Class Act are stories of school, friendship, misunderstandings, adjustments, and learning, graphic novels sharply and wittily drawn and written. Jordan’s first tentative friendship at his new school is with his guide, Liam Landers, a white kid from Riverdale whose family has a long history with the school, family-name-on-a-building long. And there’s Drew Ellis, another Black kid (from Co-op City, living with his grandmother). As Jordan and Drew discover, teachers often call them by the names of other Black students. There’s even a math teacher, Black, at the school for fourteen years, who other teachers still assume is a coach. And here’s an example of Jerry Craft’s sharp sense of humor and his characters’ resilience: Jordan and Drew turn their teachers’ mistakes into a private game, saying hello and goodbye to each other with an endless array of names: Jerome and Demetrius, Joakim and DeMarcus, Jaylen and D’Aren.
Things between Jordan and Drew and Liam are more fraught. The Landers family’s wealth is conspicuous: “Is this just one house?” Chuck wonders when he drops his son off for a visit. “Is his [Liam’s] dad a rapper?” Drew asks. No, he’s in business, and he’s always away on it. Liam is self-conscious about his family’s wealth: “Try not to, you know, judge, okay?” The family’s driver, Mr. Pierre, is in the States earning money for his family back in Haiti. There’s also a maid, which puzzles Jordan and Drew, as Liam’s mom (“You can call me Zoe”) doesn’t work. When Zoe Mrs. Landers serves takeout pizza, Drew dreams of a cheesy, dripping mess and finds instead a choice between two sauceless pies, one of which Mrs. Landers calls “the white pizza,” made with mozzarella and ricotta: “Thus its name. And that’s the only reason . . . I swear!” Visiting Jordan in Washington Heights, Liam gets to enjoy the unfraught pleasures of mac and cheese, cornbread, collard greens, and, post-basketball and lacrosse, a chopped cheese sandwich. And in the Heights, Liam gets his own joke name: Liam Neeson.
There are many kinds of comic cluelessness in these stories. Ashley, a white girl who likes Drew, touches his hair without permission and makes him one sweet potato pie after another. There’s a running joke about The Mean Streets of South Uptown, an awful YA novel (with, of course, a white author) and movie — about gritty (yes, gritty) urban life. (I flashed on the satire of Robert Townsend’s movie Hollywood Shuffle.) An ill-conceived effort to bridge an academic and economic divide has kids visit Riverdale from a South Bronx school, Cardinal De Bard, aka Cardi De Academy. (I flashed on the This American Life episode “Three Miles.”) At Riverdale and beyond, the hapless name of the National Organization of Cultural Liaisons Understanding Equality speaks for itself.
School is always school, with jerks (Andy), eccentrics (Alexandra, who speaks through a hand puppet), athletes, gossips, theater kids, and a cafeteria hierarchy. And it’s always difficult to manage friendships from the block when going to a school farther from home. Another complication: puberty is in the air, literally, with Jordan wondering, as Class Act ends, about when he will get the “big-boy stink” that Drew and Liam and everyone else has already acquired. In a third volume? I loved these books, and I hope Jordan’s story continues, maybe even at the High School of Art, Music, and Mime.
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I learned about New Kid from the This American Life episode “Talking While Black.” Act Two, “The Farce Awakens,” by Chana Joffe-Walt, is about efforts to ban New Kid and disinvite Jerry Craft from a Zoom appearance for students at a school in Texas. What a country we live in.
You can learn more about Jerry Craft’s work at his website.
A related post
School Trip, my review
Fourth panel, fourth wall
It’s hot and stuffy in the first two panels, and Aunt Fritzi won’t let Nancy open a window: “I said NO.”
Yesterday’s Nancy is today’s Nancy. Today’s Nancy is also today’s Nancy — with robots!
Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)
Wednesday, February 16, 2022
A delirium of shadows
The premise is bizarre: Suspense (dir. Frank Tuttle, 1946) is a film noir set in the world an ice-skating revue. The story bears some resemblance to that of Nightmare Alley : an itinerant man, Joe (Barry Sullivan), steps into a job, quickly rises to success, and makes a play for a woman — here, the lead skater and boss’s wife Roberta (British skating star Belita). I have decided to call the final forty-five minutes of the movie a delirium of shadows. The cinematography is by Karl Struss. I had to look up his name to realize that he was the (Academy Award-winning) cinematographer for F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise.
In these images: Barry Sullivan, Eugene Pallette as right-hand man, Belita, Albert Dekker as the boss (backlit, hatted), and an unidentified actor as a timpanist (!) in the revue’s orchestra. The final image reminds me this image of The Man (George O’Brien) in Sunrise. Click any image for a larger view.
Sardines on PBS tonight
Tonight on Nature, “The Ocean’s Greatest Feast,” about sardine migration on the South African coast.
Thanks, Chris.
Related reading
All OCA sardine posts (Pinboard)
Tuesday, February 15, 2022
How to Automat
Let Richard Conte and Coleen Gray demonstrate:
Much of The Sleeping City was filmed at Bellevue Hospital, so I think it’s safe to assume that the setting here is a genuine Automat. Note the array of extras: salt and pepper, sugar, ketchup, mustard (I think), and honey or syrup.
Here’s a spectacular compilation of the Automat on film. It’s missing the scene from That Girl in which Ann Marie (Marlo Thomas) makes ketchup soup in an Automat. But was that a real Automat?
In its heyday, the Automat was all over New York. Advertisements in the 1940 Manhattan telephone directory announce forty-five cafeterias and thirty-two retail shops: “Take home Pies, Cakes, Breads, Rolls, Cooked Foods same as served at Automats. ‘Less Work for Mother.’”
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Here, thanks to a thoughtful reader, is a menu of sorts in photos. The roll Ann Marie eats indeed resembles the top-right rolls in the first photo.
Related reading
All OCA Automat posts
The Trojan Horse Affair
A podcast series by Brian Reed and Hamza Syed: The Trojan Horse Affair. It’s an investigation of an anonymous letter describing a plot by Islamic extremists to take charge of schools in Birmingham, England. I’m four episodes in, and the story grows ever more bewildering.
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After listening to all eight episodes, I can say bewildering indeed. This commentary from Sonia Sodha, a Guardian columnist, raises important questions: “The Trojan Horse Affair : How Serial podcast got it so wrong.”
Monday, February 14, 2022
Back at 4:15
Rick Veach, our plumbing and heating and cooling guy, came by early in the morning to check out a minor problem. He promised to be back at 4:15 to take care of it.
At 4:15 he was back. And before doing the work he had come to do, he went to our hall closet to replace a lightbulb. He had somehow noticed when he was here in the morning that the bulb was out.
Related reading
All OCA dream posts (Pinboard) : Rick Veach (1959–2017)
