Mystery actors

[Click for a larger view.]

Do you recognize them? Leave your guesses in the comments. I’ll drop hints if needed.

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Strangers on a . . . TV farm.

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Oh well. The answers are in the comments.

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“All them terrible movies”

Leon Russell:

“You know how people come up to sometimes when you’re sort of a celebrity and they say real strange things to you? I met Elvis up in Vegas and he called me backstage, so I was so excited about meeting him and everything. I walked up to him and I shook hands hello, and then I said ‘Elvis, how come you ended up in all them terrible movies?’ Why did I say that?”

See also Jonathan Schwartz meeting Frank Sinatra for the first time.

And John Ashbery: “I once said to Kenneth Koch, ‘What are you supposed to say to Auden?’ And he said that about the only thing there was to say was ‘I’m glad you’re alive’ (Paris Review interview, 1980).

[Why all those terrible movies? The Colonel knows.]

“Mike, hi!”

I was attending a high-school reunion. I assume that the reunion was for my graduating class, but I recognized no one. And then I saw Mike Evans, the actor who played Lionel Jefferson on All in the Family and The Jeffersons.

“Mike, hi! I’ve only ever seen you in black and white!” I said, meaning that I’d only seen him on television. He laughed and I laughed.

Related reading
All OCA dream posts (Pinboard)

A letter to our representative

It would be disgraceful not to write:

The Honorable Mary Miller
1529 Longworth House Office Building
United States House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Congresswoman Miller:

Given the recent carnage in Highland Park, we want to ask:

You insist that the right to bear arms “shall not be abridged.” You repeat that phrase without regard for the rest of the sentence in which it appears, and without regard for what the word “arms” could have referred to when the text was written.

Antonin Scalia, as you may know, thought that the Second Amendment applies to hand-held weapons. No cannons for personal use! Are hand-held rocket launchers permitted under the Second Amendment? He said that would be a case to decide very carefully.

So here’s a question for you:

Do you believe that hand-held rocket launchers are permitted under the Second Amendment?

And if not, why do you believe that other weapons of war are?

And if we’re talking about rights that shall not be abridged, what about the right of a small child to attend a Fourth of July parade without losing both parents to a person wielding a weapon of war?

It seems to us that your willingness to protect life begins and ends in the uterus.

Sincerely, &c.

We don’t expect a reply. We had no reply to our last letter, asking what Miller had done or would be doing to encourage vaccination against COVID-19. Our congressional district still has the lowest rate of vaccination in the state.

If we get a reply, I’ll report back.

Related reading
All OCA Mary Miller posts (Pinboard)

Fishy weather

Popular Mechanics reports that in San Francisco it’s raining anchovies.

“ITHACANS VOW PEN IS CHAMP”

The scene: outside the offices of the Freeman’s Journal, a Dublin newspaper. A professor, Hugh MacHugh, is speaking to Stephen Dedalus, who has visited the newspaper on behalf of his employer, Mr. Deasy. Stephen is to use his (supposed) pull with his literary friends to see that Mr. Deasy’s letter about foot-and-mouth disease gets into the paper. Stephen has been telling an odd story of his making about two old women who climb the stairs to the top of Nelson’s pillar. Too tired to look up or down, they sit there munching plums. From the “Aeolus” episode, in which each small section of the narrative receives a headline, my favorite:

James Joyce, Ulysses (1922).

As Elaine noticed, Stephen makes the names of the two Penelopes into something of a palindrome.

Related reading
All OCA Joyce posts (Pinboard)

[Gorgias: Greek Sophist and rhetorician. Of Helen and Penelope is a lost work: “in it Antisthenes apparently argued that Penelope’s virtue made her more beautiful than Helen, whose virtue was somewhat less solidly demonstrated.” Penelope Rich (c. 1562–1607): an unwilling and openly unfaithful partner in an unhappy marriage, and the Stella of Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella. Source: Don Gifford, Ulysses Annotated.]

Lendy’s in “th’ 1960s”

[“Somewhere in Roanoke.” Zippy, July 5, 2022. Click for a larger view.]

Zippy is time-traveling in today’s strip. As an unseen employee explains, it’s “th’ 1960s,” and KFC isn’t yet sold only in franchises. “We serve KFC as a sideline.”

You can see a 1960s menu from Lendy’s at Reddit, with the Buddy Boy, the Brawny Lad, the Long Fella, KFC selections, and more. Photographs of Lendy’s locations abound: here’s a photograph of this one.

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“Your hat is a little crushed”

Leopold Bloom and John Henry Menton have a history. “I fell foul of him one evening, I remember, at bowls,” Menton tells Ned Lambert. It was the night that Bloom and Marion (Molly) Tweedy first met, at a party at Mat Dillon’s. Menton danced with Molly that night, and he wonders why she ever married the likes of Bloom: “She had plenty of game in her then.” Attending the funeral of Paddy Dignam, Bloom spots Menton, Dignam’s one-time employer. From the “Hades” episode:

James Joyce, Ulysses (1922).

This moment reminds me of the familiar scene in group meetings of all kinds: one person makes a suggestion and it’s ignored. Another person then makes the same suggestion and it’s suddenly a great idea.

After the snub, Bloom thinks: “Never mind. Be sorry after perhaps when it dawns on him. Get the pull over him that way.”

Related reading
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Darren Bailey posted to Facebook

And he said, among other things, “Let’s move on.”

Bailey is the Republican candidate for governor of Illinois. He campaigns with Mary Miller. They’re both endorsed by Donald Trump.

Mary Miller has tweeted

For contrast: here’s what my gun-loving representative in Congress, Mary Miller (R, IL-15), tweeted today. This tweet appeared hours after the murders in Highland Park. No other tweets have followed:

Independence Day reminds us of the reasons we defend our statues, our monuments, our liberty, and our history.

We are blessed to live in a land that is free because of the brave. We are born free, endowed by God with rights no government can take away.

Happy Independence Day! pic.twitter.com/nXoMEazjAz

— Rep. Mary Miller (@RepMaryMiller) July 4, 2022

The tweet is online, for now. But in case someone has the after-the-fact sense to take it down, here’s a screenshot:


I cannot help seeing the fireworks behind her as gunfire.

And what is this language about “our statues, our monuments” meant to suggest, Mary? Oh wait — I know what it’s meant to suggest. And what do you mean by “our liberty, and our history”? Does that liberty include the right to end an unwanted pregnancy? Does that liberty include the right to be who you are and use the bathroom that fits who you are? Does “our history” include the past that you and your allies want to eliminate from public education? Oh wait — I know the answers to those questions too. And as for God-given rights: if they exist, I do not believe that they include the right to carry weapons of war in everyday life.

There’s something about Mary.

Related reading
All OCA Mary Miller posts (Pinboard)