Digging Troy

Ronnie (Kerwin Matthews) is bored with college life: bored with classes, bored with being in a place run by thinkers, not doers. He comes from a family that does things, he says, a family that does things first. He finds in the life of a nineteenth-century amateur archaeolgist the inspiration to rob a Reno casino. From 5 Against the House (dir. Phil Karlson, 1955):

“It’s what I need in my life — a big first. You guys ever hear of a man named Schliemann?”

“Sure, played first base for the Giants and later invented a plastic breakfast food.”

“He dug up the ancient city of Troy in Greece.”

“Hey, what a cat, to dig Troy.”

“It was a first, get my point?”

Got it.

I can think of one other heist film in which a criminal mastermind invokes Troy in his scheming. Anyone know it? My answer is in the comments.

[“Criminal mastermind”: yes, I know it’s a cliché. I’ve been watching Only Murders in the Building.]

Parody? Not parody?

“The result is a cornucopia, and a fuller look at the radiant candor that is her oeuvre”: I had to check to make sure that I was reading a real review of a real book.

“All the documents”

From The New York Times:

Federal prosecutors investigating the role that former President Donald J. Trump and his allies played in the events leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol have issued a grand jury subpoena to the National Archives for all the documents the agency provided to a parallel House select committee inquiry, according to a copy of the subpoena obtained by The New York Times.

The subpoena, issued to the National Archives in May, made a sweeping demand for “all materials, in whatever form” that the archives had given to the Jan. 6 House committee. Those materials included records from the files of Mr. Trump’s top aides, his daily schedule and phone logs and a draft text of the president’s speech that preceded the riot.

Pocket notebook sighting

[From The Girl in Black Stockings (dir. Howard W. Koch, 1957).]

Above, a sheriff (John Dehner), a doctor (Richard H. Cutting), and a notebook. The real mystery here is what’s printed on the notebook’s cover. My guess after flipping the image: Scripto. Click on either image to pursue your own investigation.

More notebook sightings
All the King’s Men : Angels with Dirty Faces : The Bad and the Beautiful : Ball of Fire : The Big Clock : Bombshell : The Brasher Doubloon : The Case of the Howling Dog : Cat People : Caught : City Girl : Crossing Delancey : Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne : Dead End : Deep Valley : The Devil and Miss Jones : Dragnet : Extras : Eyes in the Night : The Face Behind the Mask : The Fearmakers : A Foreign Affair : Foreign Correspondent : Fury : Homicide : The Honeymooners : The House on 92nd Street : I See a Dark Stranger : Journal d’un curé de campagne : Kid Glove Killer : The Last Laugh : Le Million : The Lodger : M : Ministry of Fear : Mr. Holmes : Murder at the Vanities : Murder by Contract : Murder, Inc. : The Mystery of the Wax Museum : Naked City : The Naked Edge : Now, Voyager : The Palm Beach Story : Perry Mason : Pickpocket : Pickup on South Street : Pushover : Quai des Orfèvres : The Racket : Railroaded! : Red-Headed Woman : Rififi : La roue : Route 66 : The Scarlet Claw : Sleeping Car to Trieste : The Small Back Room : The Sopranos : Spellbound : Stage Fright : State Fair : A Stranger in Town : Stranger Things : Sweet Smell of Success : Time Table : T-Men : To the Ends of the Earth : 20th Century Women : Union Station : Vice Squad : Walk East on Beacon! : Where the Sidewalk Ends : The Woman in the Window : You Only Live Once : Young and Innocent

“Liberal elitist pizza”

[“Does Carl Bark?” Zippy, August 17, 2022. Click for a larger pie.]

Zippy is in Utah, and he’s carrying, openly — a pizza, that is, from Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana.

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)

[Frank Pepe’s white clam pie is a joy: clams, grated cheese, olive oil, garlic, oregano. That’s all.]

“Folks on the ground”

MSNBC has commentators in Wisconsin today awaiting results in the state’s primary elections. They have been talking to “folks on the ground.”

As opposed to — ?

Better: “Wisconsin voters.”

Degree, not kind

In 1989 Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for the death of Salman Rushdie. In 2022 the defeated former president (or his people) released an unredacted search warrant with the names of FBI agents.

I think that the difference between these actions is a difference of degree, not kind.

Shaving by night

Leopold Bloom prefers to shave at night. A bit of odd food for thought from the catechitical episode “Ithaca”:

James Joyce, Ulysses (1922.)

Related reading
All OCA Joyce posts (Pinboard)

More bad stuff

From The Washington Post , “Trump-allied lawyers pursued voting machine data in multiple states, records reveal”:

“The breach is way beyond what we thought,” said David D. Cross, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, who include voting-security activists and Georgia voters. “The scope of it is mind-blowing.”

*

12:34 p.m.: And still more. From The New York Times :

Lawyers for Rudolph W. Giuliani have been told that he is a target of a criminal investigation in Georgia into election interference by Donald J. Trump and his advisers, one of Mr. Giuliani’s lawyers said on Monday.

[I’ve run out of “gift” NYT links for the month.]

The Rehearsal

Our household was way late in getting to Nathan for You, but we are on time for Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal (HBO). I think that it’s the strangest thing I’ve seen on a television screen. The Rehearsal doesn’t blur the line between what’s fictional and what’s real: it removes the line with an industrial sander and then draws a new line (or lines?) elsewhere. But where?

The final (sixth) episode airs this coming Friday. Highly recommended.