A waitress speaks

The diner scene in Five Easy Pieces made me think of Dolores Dante, from Studs Terkel’s Working (New York: Pantheon, 1974):

I have to be a waitress. How else can I learn about people? How else does the world come to me? I can’t go to everyone. So they have to come to me. Everyone wants to eat, everyone has hunger. And I serve them. If they’ve had a bad day, I nurse them, cajole them. Maybe with coffee I give them a little philosophy. They have cocktails, I give them political science.

I’ll say things that bug me. If they manufacture soap, I say what I think about pollution. If it’s automobiles, I say what I think about them. If I pour water I’ll say, “Would you like your quota of mercury today?” If I serve cream, I say, “Here is your substitute. I think you’re drinking plastic.” I just can’t keep quiet. I have an opinion on every single subject there is. In the beginning it was theology, and my bosses didn’t like it. Now I am a political and my bosses don’t like it. I speak sotto voce. But if I get heated, then I don’t give a damn. I speak like an Italian speaks. I can’t be servile. I give service. There is a difference.

*

People imagine a waitress couldn’t possibly think or have any kind of aspiration other than to serve food. When somebody says to me, “You’re great, how come you’re just a waitress? Just a waitress. I’d say “Why, don’t you think you deserve to be served by me?”

So many memorable voices in that book. Sharon Atkins, receptionist: “I never answer the phone at home.” Brett Hauser, supermarket box boy: “In the general scheme of things, in the large questions of the universe, putting a can of dog food in the bag wrong is not of great consequence.” Lincoln James, maintenance man in a rendering and glue factory: “It’s not a stink, but it’s not sweet either.” Joe Zmuda, retired: “That daydreaming don’t do you any good.”

[The Social Security Death Index lists one Dolores Dante, 1929–1979. “Dolores Dante” was a pseudonym.]

Turning the tables

Representative Jamie Raskin (D, MD-8) in his closing remarks at today’s January 6 hearing, taking up theme of Donald Trump’s inauguration:

“In his inaugural address, Trump introduced one commanding image: ‘American carnage.’ Although that turn of phrase explained little about our country before he took office, it turned out to be an excellent prophecy of what his rage would come to visit on our people.”

And:

“American carnage: that’s Donald Trump’s true legacy. His desire to overthrow the people’s election and seize the presidency, interrupt the counting of Electoral College votes for the first time in American history, nearly toppled the constitutional order and brutalized hundreds and hundreds of people.”

And:

“Constitutional democracy is the silver frame, as Lincoln put it, upon which the golden apple of freedom rests. We need to defend both our democracy and our fredom with everything we have and declare that this American carnage ends here and now. In a world of resurgent authoritarianism and racism and anti-Semitism, let’s all hang tough for American democracy.”

I think Rasking might have done well to omit “Although that turn of phrase explained little about our country before he took office.” Because in truth, there’s been plenty of American carnage at home and abroad. But I can see the point of turning the tables as Raskin did.

And in the spirit of Steve Jobs’s “one more thing” moments, the hearing ended with a bombshell from Liz Cheney (R, WY), who revealed that after the last hearing, Trump tried to call a witness not yet seen in the hearings. That person declined the call and alerted their lawyer, who alerted the committee. And the committee has reported the matter to the Department of Justice. Is it witness tampering yet? With Mark Meadows?

Merrick Garland, cleanup in aisle 45!

[My transcription.]

UNHINGED

“The west wing is UNHINGED”: Cassidy Hutchinson, in a text message sent during the December 18 meeting between Trump, White House aides, Michael Flynn, Rudy Giuliani, and Sidney Powell. Trump’s “will be wild” tweet followed.

A Blackwing sighting

[From Death in Small Doses (dir. Joseph M. Newman, 1957). Click for a much larger view.]

Peter Graves is an undercover agent posing as a truck driver; Merry Anders is a waitress. The Blackwing is a pencil. Click and look at the ferrule: that’s an Eberhard Faber Blackwing for sure.

Related reading
All OCA Blackwing posts (Pinboard)

Studs Terkel and DFW

Chris at Dreamers Rise mentioned that Studs Terkel had something to say about Five Easy Pieces (dir. Bob Rafelson, 1970). Did he ever. From “Do You Like Bruegel?,” in Talking to Myself: A Memoir of My Times (New York: Pantheon, 1977):

Though it is several years since I’ve seen the film Five Easy Pieces, my indignation is lasting. Remember that scene, oh God, in which the waitress is the virago? She refuses to serve Jack Nicholson and his companions toast or something. “It’s not on the menu,” the cold bitch says. Talk about a cheap shot. Nicholson, righteous, humiliates the waitress. The audience, our eighteen-to-thirty market, applauds and cheers. The young shits.

What were we told of this nasty woman? Was it afternoon? Was it near the end of a long day for her? And how were her varicose veins? And what happened behind those swinging doors? Did she and the chef have words? And why was she waiting on tables? Was her old man sick? Did he run off? Was her daughter in trouble? And how many Bufferins did she just take? Perhaps she was indeed a Nogood Girlo. We’ll never know. We knew more than we needed to know about Nicholson, nothing about her. Yet there she was, Medusa. Why didn’t I have the guts to stand up in that darkened house and holler, “You fucking young solipsists!”?

These observations remind me of David Foster Wallace’s imagining of the life of a shopper waiting on line in a supermarket. From his 2005 Kenyon College commencement address, now known as This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life (New York: Little, Brown, 2009):

But most days, if you’re aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she’s not usually like this. Maybe she’s been up three straight nights holding the hand of her husband who’s dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it’s also not impossible. It just depends what you want to consider.

Wallace’s address has a milder version of standing up and hollering: when the audience begins to clap and cheer at the wrong spot, Wallace tells them, “this is an example of how not to think, though.”

Thanks, Chris.

*

I just remembered the great account of waiting on tables from Dolores Dante in Terkel’s Working. I’ll post an excerpt soon.

[I’ve followed the audio version of Wallace’s address.]

Bust = flood?

From Talking Points Memo, “GOPer Cites Successful Drug Bust at Border as Proof Biden Allows Drugs to Enter US”:

It’s not super clear how a drug bust in which more than 10,000 fentanyl pills were seized at the border (as reported by Michael Humphries, the [Customs and Border Protection]’s area port director of the Port of Nogales) proves that the President is unleashing a flood of drugs into the country.

The GOPer in question is our own Mary Miller (IL-15), still outdoing a box of rocks for dumbness.

Related reading
All OCA Mary Miller posts (Pinboard)

Twelve movies

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

Five Easy Pieces (dir. Bob Rafelson, 1970). Jack Nicholson plays Robert Dupea, an oil-rig worker who visits the family compound, a Chekhovian world of classical music and idleness. Robert once studied piano — thus the title — but now finds himself alienated from his family’s high-minded pursuits, alienated from his Tammy Wynette-singing girlfriend (Karen Black), alienated from everyone. I think watching movies mostly from the 1940s and ’50s makes me an unfit audience for this one. With Karen Black, Lois Smith, and Ralph Waite. ★★★ (TCM)

*

Without Warning! (dir. Arnold Laven, 1952). Adam Williams (Valerian in North by Northwest ) plays an unassuming gardener who kills blonde women with garden shears. Much better than that grim synopsis might suggest, with stylish cinematography by Joseph F. Biroc, a fresh-sounding score by Herschel Burke Gilbert, and great location shots of Chavez Ravine and the Los Angeles River. Though the outcome is never in doubt, there’s genuine suspense as the story nears its end. One great unnecessary bit: the lab analyst preparing coffee. ★★★ (YT)

*

Conflict (dir. Curtis Bernhardt, 1945). I was surprised to see this title — a Humphrey Bogart movie I’d never heard of. Deeply weird and disturbing, with Bogart as Richard Mason, an unhappily married man openly pining for his wife’s sister (Alexis Smith). Mason kills his wife (Rose Hobart) — or thinks he has — but signs that she’s still alive begin to appear — jewelry, a handkerchief, the scent of her perfume. With Sydney Greenstreet as a jovial bachelor psychologist. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

The Janes (dir. Tia Lessin and Emma Pildes, 2022). In the pre-Roe world, a small group of Chicago women established “Call Jane,” a service providing safe and affordable (or free) abortions. And the service flourished for years. I learned a lot — especially about how organized crime profited from illegal abortions. I wish that this film weren’t so timely. ★★★★ (HBO)

*

The Gospel of Eureka (dir. Donal Mosher and Michael Palmieri, 2018). Eureka Springs, Arkansas is home to an enormous Christ of the Ozarks statue, a summertime Passion Play (both the work of the Christian nationalist and anti-Semite Gerald L.K. Smith, whose views are no longer reflected in the play), and a flourishing LGBTQ community. We see both the play’s cast and drag performers making up and getting in costume, and the filmmakers seem to be trying to convince the viewer that these endeavors are not so different, and that everyone in Eureka Springs just gets along. But basic questions — population size, whether the drag performers live locally and are known to their neighbors, whether they always lip-sync to religious tunes, what Passion Play audiences might say about the LGBQT community, how that community established itself in Eureka Springs, whether anyone ever gets harassed — never get answers. This CNN story does a better job than the documentary. ★★ (CC)

*

21 Days (dir. Basil Dean, 1940). The premise is established with Hitchcockian economy and speed: Larry Durrant (Laurence Olivier), the ne’er-do-well brother of a judge (Leslie Banks, the father in The Man Who Knew Too Much), returns to London and begins a romance with the beautiful Wanda Wallen (Vivien Leigh, who would soon marry Olivier). When a man who claims to be Wanda’s husband shows up, there’s a struggle, the man ends up dead, and Larry is faced with the choice of turning himself in or letting an indigent suspect hang for murder. Larry has twenty-one days in which to decide. “Murder is promises.” ★★★★ (CC)

*

Death in Small Doses (dir. Joseph M. Newman, 1957). The doses: amphetamine, known to truckers (at least in 1957) as bennies, co-pilots, and stay-awakes. Peter Graves plays a federal agent who goes undercover as a novice driver to find the source of distribution in Los Angeles. Romance is in the air at his boarding house (with landlady Mala Powers). Mostly predictable, but the ending took naive me by surprise. Merry Anders has a good turn as a waitress, and Chuck Connors steals the movie as a pill-popping truckdriver. ★★★ (YT)

*

Joy in the Morning (dir. Alex Segal, 1965). From the novel by Betty Smith. Richard Chamberlain and Yvette Mimieux play a young married couple, Carl and Annie, struggling with multiple challenges: jealousy, fear of intimacy, parental disapproval, and the burdens of study and side jobs (Carl is in law school). There’s little chemistry between the principals, and too many exclamations: “Oh, Carl! Carl!” The most compelling character in the movie is Anthony (Donald Davis), a gay florist who befriends Annie and gives her crucial advice about life and love: his story would make a good movie. ★★ (TCM)

*

Abandoned (dir. Joe Newman, 1949). A glib but ultimately earnest reporter, Mark (Dennis O’Keefe), teams up with Paula (Gale Storm), who’s come to Los Angeles to search for her missing sister. Risking great danger, Mark and Paula uncover a baby-selling racket. At times a procedural, with the chief of police (Jeff Chandler) assisting the searchers; at times a noir, with shadowy corners (courtesy of cinematographer William Daniels) and implications of sadistic brutality. Look for Raymond Burr as a sketchy detective. ★★★ (YT)

*

From the Criterion Channel’s Noir in Color collection

Desert Fury (dir. Lewis Allen, 1947). A love pentagon, I’d call it, with Mary Astor, Wendell Corey, John Hodiak, Burt Lancaster, and Lizabeth Scott all furious and desiring in the desert. Criterion notes the gay subtext that joins criminal partners Eddie (Hodiak) and Johnny (Corey), but it’s a text, really, written in all caps. Johnny’s account of how he and Eddie got together is an extraordinary thing to appear in 1947: they met in an Automat at two in the morning, and, Johnny says, “I went home with him that night.” The movie though is inert until its last twenty minutes or so, and then the pentagon begins to wobble and spin. ★★

Inferno (dir. Roy Ward Baker, 1953). There is no backstory: we begin with a dissolute millionaire, Donald Whitley Carson III (Robert Ryan), one leg broken, left by his wife Geraldine (Rhonda Fleming) and her lover Joseph Duncan (William Lundigan) to die in the desert. Determined to survive and exact revenge, Carson becomes self-reliant, splinting his leg, fashioning ropes with which to navigate rock formations, discovering a spring, fashioning a crutch, and avoiding discovery by the treacherous couple, who now need to make sure that he’s dead. Every minute of this movie is intensely watchable, and the outcome is never certain. My favorite moment: money in a cabin. ★★★★

[Inferno was a 3-D movie with stereo sound; thus the objects thrown at or falling toward the viewer and the slightly blurred dialogue.]

I Died a Thousand Times (dir. Stuart Heisler, 1955). It’s a scene-by-scene remake of High Sierra (dir. Raoul Walsh, 1941), with Jack Palance and Shelley Winters taking the roles of Roy Earle (Humphrey Bogart) and Marie Garson (Ida Lupino), and it doesn’t come close to the original. Palance and Winters are fine actors, but the Roy–Marie relationship here lacks the desperation and pathos of the original. (I for one can’t watch Lupino’s final minutes in the original without some added tears.) And there’s too much mambo music: mambo, mambo, mambo. ★★

Related reading
All OCA movie posts (Pinboard)

Safari bookmark folders and subfolders

I accidentally moved a Safari bookmark folder into another bookmark folder on my Mac. And guess what? There’s no way to move it back out and have it be a folder again. Once a subfolder, always a subfolder.

The solution: Create a new bookmark folder. Move the bookmarks from the subfolder into the new folder. Delete the now empty subfolder.

And then there’s a new problem: how to move the new folder so that it’s in alphabetical order. It does not appear possible: any attempt to move it turns into another folder’s subfolder. That’s how I ended up turning a folder into a subfolder to begin with.

I miss SafariSort.

Thirteenth Avenue Retail Market

[Thirteenth Avenue Retail Market, 3910 13th Avenue, Boro Park, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. As seen from 40th Street and 39th Street. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click either image for a much larger view.]

The Thirteenth Avenue Retail Market (WIndsor 8-8788) was one of seven New York City markets built in the interest of sanitation, removing pushcarts from the streets and placing them indoors, with the benefits of air conditioning, screening, and hot and cold running water. Two photographs dated 1939 — 1, 2 — show Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia in the Thirteenth Avenue Market. I think the following paragraph clinches it: the market must have opened in the second half of 1939:

[“Food Distribution on Wartime Basis Is Mapped by City.” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 28, 1941.]

But years later, pushcarts were still a problem. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle (May 20, 1952) has an article titled “Pushcart Solution: More City Markets.” A photograph of life inside the Thirteenth Avenue market accompanied the article. The caption:

THE SANITARY WAY — The 13th Avenue Retail Market, pictured here, replaced a neighborhood pushcart market and brought the peddlers inside. Here the food is kept free from dust, dirt and flies. Moreover, the enclosed market is easier both to clean and keep clean than the street.

You can see a non-murky version of the still-under-copyright photograph that went with the caption via the Brooklyn Public Library.

And here are two photographs of the market as seen from Thirteenth Avenue:

[Thirteenth Avenue Retail Market, 1951. Photograph by Walter Albertin, New York World-Telegram & Sun. From the Library of Congress.]

[Thirteenth Avenue Retail Market, 1965. Photograph by Phyllis Twachtman, New York World-Telegram & Sun. From the Library of Congress.]

I have dim memories of the Thirteenth Avenue Retail Market, always known as “the market.” It was relatively dim inside, and noisy. Produce was available, of course. I think there were cheap toys for sale, but that might be wishful thinking. My most vivid memory of the market: the red letters announcing its name.

When I was a boy in Brooklyn in the 1960s, there was at least one pushcart still at work on Thirteenth Avenue, on the wide sidewalk at the southeast corner of 39th Street. That spot belonged to Whitey the banana man. Yes, a guy who sold nothing but bananas. They were displayed on a pushcart with plastic grass covering the shelves. And that of course is where we bought our bananas. If I had been older, say, Holden Caulfield’s age, I would have wondered where Whitey went in the winter.

The Thirteenth Avenue Retail Market still stands — now doing duty as a Kosher supermarket.

Bonus: you can see the Bronx’s Arthur Avenue Retail Market (also still standing) in the opening credits of Marty (dir. Delbert Mann, 1955).

*

August 5: At least three newspaper articles document the market’s opening on Tuesday, October 5, 1939. Here’s one from The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. And two articles — 1, 2 — from The New York Times. Details: the building, a WPA project, replaced a pushcart area between 39th and 42nd Streets. The market housed 137 stands, and was designed in the shape of a T, “a monster T.,” according to the Eagle. It had heat and air-conditioning and a basement for storage. Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, quoted in the Eagle: “I think that you people, just the same as those living on 5th Ave. and Park Ave., are entitled to do your buying in stores.”

Related reading
All OCA Boro Park posts (Pinboard) : Kubrick Self Service Stores (Next to the market) : More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives : Thirteenth Avenue Retail Market, in color (Forgotten NY)

Spoilers vs. foreshadowing

Today’s Nancy.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)