“‘Alternative’ votes”

From The New York Times: “Previously undisclosed communications among Trump campaign aides and outside advisers provide new insight into their efforts to overturn the election in the weeks leading to Jan. 6.”

The scheming in these e-mails is transparently dishonest. Of the fake-electors ploy, Jack D. Wilenchik, a lawyer, writes,

I guess there’s no harm in it, (legally at least) — i.e. we would just be sending in “fake” electoral votes to Pence so that “someone” in Congress can make an objection when they start counting votes, and start arguing that the “fake” votes should be counted.”

In another e-mail, Wilenchik writes that “‘alternative’ votes is probably a better term than ‘fake’ votes.” He appends a smiley face to that suggestion.

Remember “alternative facts”?

An Automat ad

A ghost ad in the Garment District.

Related reading
All OCA Automat posts (Pinboard)

Literature clock

Self-explanatory.

I would like to know if it has 5:15 a.m., but I wouldn’t want to have to get up that early to find out.

*

My friend Stefan Hagemann tells me that 5:15 a.m. is a passage from Hunter Thompson.

Joni Mitchell sings

And plays — there’s one guitar solo. At the Newport Folk Festival, yesterday:

An introduction : “Carey” : “Come In from the Cold” : “Help Me” : “A Case of You” : “Big Yellow Taxi” : “Just Like This Train” : “Why Do Fools Fall in Love” : “Amelia” : “Love Potion No. 9” : “Shine” : “Summertime” : “Both Sides Now” : “The Circle Game.”

And that’s all — there’s a set list.

Brandi Carlile: “Did the world just stop? Did everything that was wrong with it just go away?”

Trump edits

[As found here. Click for a much larger view.]

The Trump edits to this statement are almost entirely self-explanatory. But why take out “and sickened”? To be outraged is to be angry. I’m going to guess that for the defeated former president, to be sickened, or to say that you’re sickened, is to look weak.

*

And for the record: he did not deploy the National Guard or federal law enforcement.

*

I realized only early this morning: omitting “you do not represent me" and “you do not represent our movement,” while leaving in “you do not represent our country,” seems to suggest that “Antifa” was behind the January 6 riot. Which of course doesn’t jibe with “you’re very special” and “we love you.” But 2 + 2 sometimes equals 5, right?

The Van Gelder Studio

The Van Gelder Studio, coming back.

A related post
Rudy Van Gelder (1924–2016)

Self-rule and survival

Timothy Snyder, on “Self-Rule and Survival”:

Thanks to Ukrainian resistance, we have all been given a chance to think, with at least some hope, about the future of democracy. Thanks to the January 6 hearings, Americans have been given a chance to think about the choice they can make to preserve our republic. It would be a very good thing if, in our midterm elections of 2022, we voted only for candidates who denounce the big lie that Trump won the 2020 election. Beyond that, it is important for all of us, these next two years, to make clear what we stand for. A second coup is being planned in America. Like the first one it will fail if it is attempted — but it will fail in a different way, by breaking the country apart. America will not survive without self-rule, and I fear it is unlikely to survive a second attempt to take it away.

Other posts quoting Timothy Snyder
“Believe in truth” : “The individual who investigates” : Nationalism, patriotism, and possible futures : “9 Theses on Putin’s Fascism”

Nightspots

I took a look at 52nd Street and found the Onyx Club and the Famous Door, fabled names in jazz.

[The Onyx Club, 62 West 52nd Street, c. 1939–1941.]

[The Famous Door, 66 West 52nd Street, c. 1939–1941.]

[Both clubs, c. 1939–1941. All photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives Collections.]

The name on the Onyx Club’s marquee: Kenny Watts. Patrick Burke‘s Come In and Hear the Truth: Jazz and Race on 52nd Street (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008) notes that the Onyx Club closed in December 1939 after being picketed as unfair to union musicians,

both because the club had failed to pay union members adequately and because it was currently featuring Kenny Watts and his Kilowatts, “a non-union combination.” In September 1940, the union picketed the Swing Club at 35 West 52nd, and in October the Famous Door appeared on the “Unfair List of Local 802.” Although their recourse to the union could be helpful, it is clear that performing on 52nd Street could be a difficult way for musicians to make a living.

At the Famous Door when these photographs were taken: Ella Fitzgerald. That banner (wow) reads “First Lady of Swing.” One side says, I think, “The Tisket A Tasket Girl.” Or is it “Gal”? Fitzgerald would have been in a new role at the Famous Door, fronting a band not long after the death of drummer and bandleader Chick Webb.

Among the musicians associated with the Onxy Club, the violinist and singer Stuff Smith and His Onyx Club Boys.

[Stuff Smith at the Onyx Club. Date unknown.]

Here are three samples of Stuff: “Onyx Club Spree” (1937), a 1965 quartet performance, and a 1957 (?) appearance with Fitzgerald, Roy Eldridge, and the Oscar Peterson Trio.

Look closely at the first photograph and you’ll see between the two nightspots a third, Lou Richman’s Dizzy Club. Richman was the brother of the entertainer Harry Richman. In 1936 Time mentioned the club’s seventeen-year-old female bouncer. The club would not have been named for Dizzy Gillespie — who was years away from being a personage on 52nd Street.

And Chez Lina, at 70 West 52nd (visible in the second photograph): that was a restaurant.

Related reading
More OCA posts with photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives : The Famous Door and The Onyx Club (Wikipedia)

Domestic comedy

[Star Trek. Shatner front and center.]

“What acting.”

“What acting?”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by Stella Zawistowski. Though SZ is known as maker of difficult puzzles, her Stumpers tend to be relatively easy. Not today’s puzzle though, which took me half an hour to finish. A solid Stumper. So I can finally throw back my head like a baying hound and bellow “Stella! Stella!” And mean it.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

1-A, ten letters, “Diva designation.” This clue seemed to me a giveaway. A good start. Thank you.

6-D, six letters, “Region abutting Switzerland and Germany.” Of note to me because Elaine and I and our friend Margie King Barab once rendezvoused at a restaurant with this region’s cuisine. We were in Manhattan.

9-D, eight letters, “Went over.” Dig the vagueness.

12-D, ten letters, “Bit associated with Elvis.” I once saw an exhibit of Elvis artifacts at the local mall. The saddest exhibit I’ve ever seen. Sunglasses with the TCB insigina (Taking Care of Business.) Many 12-Ds.

17-A, ten letters. “Foldable food.” Yes, indeed.

18-A, four letters, “Badly in need of a wash.” Ick.

25-A, seven letters, “Much consumed juice.” A little deceptive, but I was not deceived.

25-D, ten letters, “Ready to go.” Oof.

27-D, ten letters, “Evincing one’s annoyance.” Oof. Oof.

31-A, five letters, “It’s in tanks a lot.” A wonderful clue. My first thought was SANKA.

46-D, five letters, “A little relief.” Very clever.

38-A, eight letters, “Drying out, perhaps.” ONTHEWAG — no, it doesn’t fit.

50-D, four letters, “County with radio station KVYN.” Now I get it.

56-A, ten letters, “Got nowhere.” I think the first four letters are meant to mislead.

61-A, ten letters, “Absents oneself.” Lovely.

My favorite: 36-D, eight letters, “Redundant reckoning.”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

[“I can finally throw back,” &c.: paraphrasing the stage direction from the play.]