Thomas to Meadows

From the Washington Post story about text messages between Ginni Thomas and Mark Meadows. Thomas to Meadows, November 5, 2020:

Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators (elected officials, bureaucrats, social media censorship mongers, fake stream media reporters, etc) are being arrested & detained for ballot fraud right now & over coming days, & will be living in barges off GITMO to face military tribunals for sedition.

The criminality and craziness in these messages is staggering. I can’t even can’t even.

Walking every street

From The New York Times, “One Cure for Pandemic Doldrums: Walking Every Street in Your City.” With Peoria, among others.

I am reminded of a story about the poet Charles Reznikoff, an inveterate walker. The story goes that when was asked why he had never traveled to Europe, he replied that he still hadn’t walked every street in New York City.

Ted Cruz’s afterglow

From The Independent : “Ted Cruz photographed checking his Twitter mentions after ‘performative tantrum’ at Supreme Court hearing”:

Senator Ted Cruz was caught checking his phone for Twitter mentions by a photo journalist after a confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson on Wednesday.

The Texas Republican was accused by social media users of a “performative tantrum” at the hearing after he ignored repeated requests from senator Dick Durbin, the chair of Senate Judiciary Committee, to stop speaking after his allotted time.

That first sentence though could use improvement: “Twitter mentions by a photojournalist”? No. Asking who did what makes it easy to see how the sentence might be made clearer:

A photojournalist caught Senator Ted Cruz checking his phone for Twitter mentions after a confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson on Wednesday.

If “his phone” leaves any ambiguity about whose phone, the sentence could go this way:

A photojournalist caught Senator Ted Cruz checking for Twitter mentions after a confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson on Wednesday.

The sentences that follow make clear that the junior senator was using his (own) phone.

The article’s headline is a reminder that performative has become what Fowler’s Modern English Usage would call a “worsened word,” once neutral or commendatory but now pejorative.

[The Independent has used three spellings: photo-journalist, photojournalist, and most recently, photo journalist. I’ve used photojournalist, which is overwhelmingly more frequent in both British and American English.]

A Homeric ring

Reading a review of Daniel Mendelsohn’s Three Rings: A Tale of Exile, Narrative, and Fate made me think back to ring composition in Homer. Here’s an explanation, from Ralph Hexter’s A Guide to The Odyssey: A Commentary on the English Translation of Robert Fitzgerald (New York: Vintage, 1993):

Ring composition is a characteristic archaic Greek device that poets frequently employed to organize their material and that we presume helped singers and listeners to keep both details and the whole clearly in mind. In other words, it functions in part as a mnemonic device. A ring may involve words or phrases within one sentence, thoughts in a paragraph, or [. . .] narrative blocks. The classic form involves the treatment of elements a, b, and c, after which the poet takes them or variants of them and presents them in reverse order, c′, b′, a′, so that he or she concludes where he or she began.

There are many rings in Homer’s epics (for instance). My favorite is the one that structures the wanderings of Odysseus. I would ask students to memorize it and, in the spirit of oral tradition, recite it (for some number of 100s for quizzes). So I’d have students coming in before or after class or during office hours to recite. Many students thought the memorizing would be daunting. But I never had a student who was unable to do it. Along the way I heard some wonderful stories from students being helped and cheered on by roommates while practicing.

The following schema is from assignment pages that would go out with books 9–12 (Odysseus’s account of his wanderings):

[Click for a larger view.]

I just remembered: I once spoke to a high-school English class about the Odyssey, and an account of my visit appeared on the school’s page in the local newspaper. I was said to have given the students “inside information” on Homer’s poem. In other words, I showed them this ring.

Related reading
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[I’ve spelled proper names as found in Stanley Lombardo’s translation. Contra the review that prompted this post: ring composition is not a matter of digression.]

Eww

Our household’s representative in Congress, Mary Miller (Illinois-15), has been endorsed by Ted Cruz, the junior senator from Texas. Miller will be facing Rodney Davis in the Republican primary for a redrawn 15th district, so she won’t remain our representative for long. Not that she ever was our representative. She has allied herself with the worst of the worst — Biggs, Boebert, Gaetz, Gohmert, Gosar, Greene, Jordan, and Perry, among others — and has done nothing but stunt and cast appalling votes. She already has the endorsement of the defeated former president. And now Cruz. Eww.

From a 2021 post: “Every time I see Ted Cruz, I am glad that I am someone with more scruples. And a better beard.”

Related reading
All OCA Mary Miller posts

[I won’t link to the source of the Cruz–Miller story. You can guess why. And yes, “junior senator” is deliberate. And yes, his performance yesterday was a disgrace.]

Ted and Suzy and Fluffy

In the 1950s, Ted Knight was a children’s television host, adept with puppets and ventriloquism. That work must have brought him to the attention of the producers of Lassie, where he appeared in a single episode as Mr. Ventrilo, a traveling entertainer and The World’s Greatest Ventriloquist. His dog-puppet is named Suzy. Lassie thinks she is real.

[Ted Knight as Mr. Ventrilo, with Suzy and Lassie. From the Lassie episode “The Puppet,” March 29, 1959. Click for a larger view.]

For a Lassie fan (like me, from childhood’s hour), the appearance of Mr. Ventrilo’s dog-puppet (now named Fluffy) on The Mary Tyler Moore Show is a wonderful moment of TV intertextuality.

[Ted Knight as Ted Baxter, with Fluffy and Mary Tyler Moore. From the Mary Tyler Moore Show episode “Murray Faces Life,” February 10, 1973.]

There’s no explanation of why Ted Baxter has a dog-puppet in his apartment. But why not? Ted says that it cheers up the stewardesses (sic ) in his apartment building when they’re feeling down.

You can find both episodes at YouTube: Lassie, TMTMS.

Related reading
All OCA Lassie posts : TMTMS posts (Pinboard)

[Almost every post now is a respite from current events.]

dic·tio·nary stuff

An especially good episode of the Merriam-Webster podcast Word Matters: “What Do the Dots Mean in a Definition?” Also starring the tilde, guide words, double hyphens, undefined run-ons, and nattering nabobs of negativism.

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[The alliteration story recounted in this episode is fun, but judging from a 1973 edition of Barron’s Vocabulary Builder, I think that a page could never run from nabob to nattering, or from pusillanimous to pussyfooter. Not enough words in between.]

Sheesh

[From the confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson.]

A couple of minutes ago, Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) described Odysseus as having himself tied to the mast of his ship so that he would not be tempted by the call of the Sirens. Uh, no. If Odysseus did not want to be tempted, he could have stopped his ears, as his crew did at his (per Circe’s) direction. Odysseus’s ears are unstopped: he chooses to be both tempted and restrained. (He’s Mr. Reckless Curiosity, living on the edge.)

*

The senator made me the same mistake in the next day’s questioning. In his metaphor, Odysseus was a judge; the mast, the Constitution.

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[This post had originally had an additional sheesh: a senatorial error in subject-verb agreement. But that was my mishearing of has for have. I checked: the v of have was barely there.]

Can you read this handwriting?

I’ve been dipping into the NYC Historical Vital Records Project in search of old relations.

Can anyone tell me how my maternal great-grandfather was employed when my grandmother was born?


The handwriting is, let’s say, expressive. The first letter looks like an S. Three of the four lowercase ss on the certificate (all within words) preserve the loop at the top of the letter but lack the loop at the bottom. Which makes me wonder: could that be a capital L? Is that a quick, blurred version of Laborer? If not that, what?

The death certificate for this great-grandfather lists his occupation as porter in a printing shop. I’ve been unable to find other records with his name. (It’s hit and miss.) I’ll be grateful for any earnest guess about this handwritten word.

[The handwriting on this certificate is so, let’s say, expressive that White (for “Color”) looks like Witr.]

Two seasons, ten movies

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers. Sources: Criterion Channel, HBO Max, Hulu, TCM, YouTube.]

The Mary Tyler Moore Show (created by James L. Brooks and Allan Burns, seasons six and seven, 1975–1977).

Six: Phyllis has disappeared, gone to San Francisco, and she misses Lars (he’s dead, as you would only know from watching the spinoff Phyllis). Meta: in the season’s second episode, Mary comments on how predictable every element in her life is (including all the newsroom bits), and she packs up and moves to a larger (and weird, and ugly) apartment, where Penny Marshall shows up as a neighbor and John Ritter pops in as a newly ordained minister, performing a wedding in tennis wear. Chuckles the Clown dies at the hands, so to speak, of an elephant, and Robbie Rist (cousin Oliver from The Brady Bunch ) appears as a cute kid. ★★★ (H)

Seven: I think the writers were beginning to run out of good ideas: Johnny Carson (really?) shows up (sort of) for a party; Ted and Georgette host a talk show; Mary dates Murray’s father (Lew Ayres!); Lou, Murray, and Ted imagine what it would be like to be married to Mary; Mary dates Lou. There’s even an episode full of entertainment, à la The Dick Van Dyke Show, with Georgette dancing, Ted ventriloquizing, and Mary singing a hilariously prim “One for My Baby.” Sexism in the office seems to worsen, with Lou as the worst offender. The final episode doesn’t make everything right, but it sure makes the tears fall. ★★★ (H)

*

Mary and Rhoda (dir. Barnet Kellman, 2000). Mary (now widowed) and Rhoda (twice divorced) meet in Manhattan after being out of touch for years. Each is an older woman struggling to find a spot in the working world (Mary as a television producer, Rhoda as a photographer); each has a daughter in college in the city (Mary, Rose; Rhoda, Meredith). But the chemistry that made TMTMS a joy is missing, and it’s painful to see Moore’s face so distorted by cosmetic surgery. Worst scene: when Mary’s compassionate report about a young killer and his family airs on a bar’s TV, Mary and Rhoda stand by as the patrons (who don’t know Mary or that she produced the episode) gather round, watch in silence, and applaud — and the bartender tears up. ★★ (YT)

*

The Pretender (dir. W. Lee Wilder, 1947). Albert Dekker plays Kenneth Holden, a not-so-suave financial manager borrowing from the trust of Claire Worthington (Catherine Craig), the woman he’s scheming to marry. When Claire announces her plans to marry another man, Holden arranges with a go-between for a hit man to kill the guy: the killer will know his target by seeing an engagement photo in the paper. When Claire drops her fiancé for Holden, and his picture appears in the paper, it’s trouble, because the go-between has been shot to death, and Holden, with no way to contact the unknown hit man, now fears for his life. Directed by Billy Wilder’s brother, this movie is truly, deeply weird in plotting and execution (no pun intended), partly redeemed by Paul Dessau’s music (which includes a nearly atonal pianist playing in a nightclub) and John Alton’s cinematography. ★★★ (YT)

*

The French Dispatch (dir. Wes Anderson, 2021). An homage to The New Yorker Past, in the form of several stories from The French Dispatch, published in Ennui-sur-Blasé as a magazine supplement to a newspaper, the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun. It’s a highly inventive movie, with all kinds of clever visual effects and an outstanding cast. But it’s all surface, surface after surface, none of it adding up to very much. I expected to love this movie but was enormously disappointed. ★★ (HBO)

*

The Lost Weekend (dir. Billy Wilder, 1945). When I last saw it, in 2016, I wrote a three-sentence review. This time around I thought of looking for Lubitsch touches, and I think I found them: in the initial tracking shot, ending with a bottle hanging on a rope outside an apartment window; in the singer-pianist at Harry and Joe’s (played by Harry Barris, who wrote “I Surrender, Dear,” among other songs); and in the joke about Yom Kippur and St. Patrick’s Day. Ray Milland gives a great performance as Don Birnam, by turns suave and desperate, capable of any deception that will give him the chance to be alone and drink. The other standout is Doris Dowling as Gloria, barfly, escort, and slang specialist. ★★★★ (TCM)


*

When the Clock Strikes (dir. Edward L. Cahn, 1961). A man is about to be executed for a crime he may not have committed. A witness who testified against him (James Brown) and the convicted man’s wife (Merry Anders) are at a nearby lodge, awaiting the execution. But they’re doing more than watching and waiting: they’re trying to figure out how to get hold of $160,000 that the convicted man stashed away — but where? Often inert, but the pace quickens and the movie becomes more interesting toward the end. ★★ (YT)

[In 2022 money, $160,000 = $1,518.212.71.]

*

My Cousin Vinny (dir. Jonathan Lynn, 1992). Vinny Gambini (Joe Pesci), a personal-injury lawyer, travels from Brooklyn to Wazoo City, Alabama, with his girlfriend Mona Lisa Vito (Marisa Tomei) to defend two college kids, his cousin (Ralph Macchio) and his cousin’s friend (Mitchell Whitefield), both charged with murder in a case of mistaken identity. Fred Gwynne appears in his last role as a judge who may or may not figure out that Vinny has been telling lies about his legal background. Everything about this movie is funny and wonderful, from the diner menu to Vinny’s courtroom apparel to the search for a quiet place to sleep to Mona Lisa’s turn on the witness stand. My favorite line: “Yeah yeah yeah,” because that’s exactly how we said it in Brooklyn. ★★★★ (HBO)

[Bonus: spot the copy of The Elements of Style (third edition) in the judge’s chambers.]

*

People Will Talk (dir. Joseph l. Mankiewicz, 1951). It’s a strange movie, a cross between serious commentary on current events (McCarthyism) and light romantic comedy, and it’s all about secrets. Dr. Noah Praetorius (Cary Grant) has one: how was he earning a living before teaching at a medical school? Shunderson, just Shunderson (Finlay Currie) has one: why is he — a servant? a friend? — always following Dr. Praetorious around? Deborah, just Deborah (Jeanne Crain) has one: why has she fainted while sitting in on an anatomy class? Secrets left unexplained: how they got the word gynecologist past the censors, and whether Hume Cronyn, the little investigator of the story, is meant to resemble Roy Cohn. ‌★★★ (CC)

*

Three from Republic Pictures

Strangers in the Night (dir. Anthony Mann, 1944). It’s from Republic Pictures, so it’s low-budget effort, but it’s by Anthony Mann, so let’s give it a try. It’s an ultra-bizarre story, with an old woman, Hilda Blake (Helen Thimig); her paid companion Ivy Miller (Edith Barrett); a modern woman of medicine, Dr. Leslie Ross (Virginia Grey); and a Marine back from war, Johnny Meadows (William Terry). And watching over them all, a portrait of Mrs. Blake’s daughter Rosemary, who inscribed a copy of A Shropshire Lad that found its way to Johnny overseas. I can’t say more without giving away the whole thing, but it’s sure worth fifty-six minutes of your time. ★★★★ (YT)

[A discovery after watching: Philip MacDonald, who wrote the story, was a screenwriter for Rebecca.]

Hoodlum Empire (dir. Joseph Kane, 1952). War veteran Joe Gray (John Russell) and a couple of army pals run a happy little gas station and café, with just one problem: Joe has an unsavory backstory, with a mobster uncle (Luther Adler) and his associates, and they’re now trying to pin their racketeering on Joe. Brian Donlevy, Claire Trevor, Forrest Tucker, and Grant Withers are among the supporting players in this modest but absorbing Republic Pictures effort. Adding interest: the story is told largely in flashbacks from different characters’ perspectives. Yet another movie in which mobster talk and tactics make me think of a defeated former president. ★★★ (YT)

Storm Over Lisbon (dir. George Sherman, 1944). It’s a Republic foray into Casablanca territory, with a white-jacketed nightclub owner, Deresco (Erich von Stroheim), an intelligence-carrying American agent, John (Richard Arlen), and a beautiful dancer, Maritza (Vera Hruba Ralston, who can neither dance nor act well). Republic must have gone all out with this one: the sets are impressively elaborate. But the plot seems like the imaginings of kids: the dancer held prisoner in a nightclub, the agent hiding out in a wine cellar, the dancer and agent escaping by running off the nightclub floor. My favorite moment: everyone suddenly — and I do mean suddenly —materializes in the cellar with Maritza and John: Deresco and associates, police, and the streetsingers who have strolled through scene after scene. ★★ (YT)

Related reading
All OCA movie posts (Pinboard)