Finding you well

The unhinged anti-Semite formerly known as Kanye West has closed his Donda Academy, effective immediately. The Donda Academy is or was an unaccredited private (Christian) K-12 school, charging $15,000 yearly tuition.

The principal’s announcement of the October surprise — school’s out! — rewards careful study. It’s a nice reminder never to begin a message with “I hope this e-mail finds you well.” Or “I hope this email finds you well.” Take your pick.

I hope this blog post finds you well.

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And now, on the same day, the school is, supposedly, “back and returning with a vengeance.”

[The Donda announcement begins “We hope this email finds you well.” I still prefer e-mail.]

Jambalaya

[Click for a larger serving.]

Elaine and I split a can of Progresso Spicy Jambalaya with Sausage & Ham last week. Not bad, but I thought I could do better. So we assembled the ingredients (i.e., went shopping), and I made a pot of jambalaya yesterday.

I followed this recipe, more or less, and had excellent results. I remembered that the recipe called for 16 oz. of crushed tomatoes only after dumping in all of a 28 oz. can, so I scooped almost half a can’s worth of tomatoes out of the pot as carefully as I could. The recommended 2½ cups of chicken broth (I used low-sodium stock) were not nearly enough to soften the rice, so I used the whole quart.

The recipe is supposed to be “easy to make in one pot.” And as Elaine reminds me, “one pot” means just one burner in use. The preparation for the cooking required four bowls (to hold chicken, Andouille sausage, celery, green pepper, onion, and garlic), two small cups (for dry seasoning, hot sauce, and Worcestershire), and one measuring cup (for rice and stock). And another small cup for scooping out tomatoes. So many bowls and cups. But still, “easy to make in one pot,” with little skill required. The only changes I’ll make for future cooking will be to add some oil when sauteeing the vegetables and avoid the unforced tomato error.

The jambalaya turned out well: intensely flavorful, and hot without being incendiary. And, if it doesn’t go without saying, far better and far more substantial than the canned stuff, whose main selling point seems to be its intense heat. “Hotter Than ’Ell,” to borrow from Fletcher Henderson.

Call for bad handwriting

[Pretty much actual size. Click for a larger view.]

The New York Times wants to see your bad handwriting, for possible use in an article about grown-ups whose handwriting has gone awry. Here’s my contribution, sent today.

As I told the Times, my handwriting declines when I’m writing notes to myself for future reference. I often find that what was readable in the moment is unreadable, or nearly so, later on. When I’m writing for other eyes, my handwriting — sometimes printing, sometimes cursive — is still pretty spiffy.

Can you decipher what’s written here?

*

October 27: Here’s more of mine, much worse.

Related reading
All OCA handwriting posts (Pinboard)

Eyes

Konstantin Levin has come to visit his brother Nikolai.

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, translated by Constance Garnett, revised by Leonard J. Kent and Nina Berberova (New York: Modern Library, 2000).

“You did not expect to find me like this,” Nikolai says. But the brothers’ eye-to-eye contact immediately establishes “a living connection between living men.”

When I read this passage, I remembered visiting a dying friend. He was nearly unrecognizable. The only way I could see him as himself was to look at his eyes.

Also from this novel
“The turning point of summer” : Theory of dairy farming : Toothache : Anna meta : “Brainless beef!” : “He could not help observing this” : “Official activity” : “All of this together” : “What they had no conception of” : “The back of your head neck”

Two visions

From the latest installment of Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American:

The Republican Party’s diminished base has now shifted toward backing a strong government that will impose its will on the rest of us, while for all their disagreements — or perhaps because of them — Democrats have demonstrated that lawmakers across a wide spectrum of political beliefs really can work together to pass popular legislation.

Which vision will prevail in the U.S. will play out over the next two years.

C-Man Mongol

[Dean Jagger and Lotte Elwen. From C-Man (dir. Joseph Lerner, 1949). Click for a larger view.]

Notice the ferrule? I did. That’s a Mongol.

Related reading
All OCA Mongol pencil posts (Pinboard)

“Close the case”

From The Drive by Night (dir. Raoul Walsh, 1940). Lana Carlsen (Ida Lupino) walks out of the DA's office and toward the camera, sure that she’s off the hook.

Twelve movies

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

Casablanca (dir. Michael Curtiz, 1942). I remember watching years ago, for the -nth time, in an auditorium full of undergrads, many of whom gasped, literally, when Ilsa reveals that she had been married to Viktor all through her Paris romance with Rick. This time I gasped, figuratively, when I realized more clearly than ever that Viktor understands not only what happened in Paris but also what happened when he was at his underground meeting (that’s when Ilsa steals away to the Café Américain). A great accompaniment to the movie: the Radio Open Source podcast episode “We’ll Always Have Paris,” with Christopher Lydon, Lesiie Epstein (son and nephew of the screenwriters, Julius J. and Philip G. Epstein), and A.S. Hamrah. One observation therein: the movie has only four American-born actors with speaking parts: Humphrey Bogart, Joy Page, Dan Seymour, and Dooley Wilson. ★★★★ (TCM)

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In a Lonely Place (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1950). Elaine and I are going to read the Dorothy B. Hughes novel, so we thought it wise to watch the movie again while it was available. I was struck this time by how much the movie, with a screenwriter, Dixon Steele (Humphrey Bogart), at its center, is about the movies — about plots and motives and plausibility. And the plot here suggests that any solid citizen is capable of sudden, uncontrolled violence (witness the after-dinner scene with Dixon and friends). A great performance by Bogart (whose mutually violent relationship with Mayo Methot, his third wife, adds a disturbing edge to the proceedings) and a greater performance by Gloria Grahame as Laurel Gray, drawn to and terrified of her screenwriter neighbor. ★★★★ (TCM)

[Dark enough already, but the novel, as I now know, is much, much darker.]

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Everything Is Copy: Nora Ephron — Scripted & Unscripted (dir. Jacob Bernstein and Nick Hooker, 2015). Elaine is a big Nora Ephron fan: the two even exchanged several e-mails. I, too, like Ephron’s writing and screenwriting. In this documentary, Jacob Bernstein interviews his mother’s sisters, friends, and colleagues, piecing together a life that became, in various ways, material for writing, as per a precept of Ephron’s screenwriter mother, “Everything is copy,” which I take to mean that whatever happens, a writer should make something of it. The one thing that didn’t become copy: Ephron’s final illness, which she kept secret from almost everyone close to her. ★★★★ (HBO)

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N Is a Number: A Portrait of Paul Erdős (dir. George Paul Csicsery, 1993). I am glad that Tolstoy’s passing observation about cows and food and milk led to this documentary. Paul Erdős (1913–1996) was a mathematician of extraordinary eccentricity, with no fixed residence, traveling with a suitcase from one mathematician’s house to another’s, giving away money to worthy students and offering prizes for the solutions to mathematical problems. Watching this documentary left me with great admiration for endeavors that are and always will be beyond me. But — look out — I may be developing an interest in prime numbers. ★★★★ (YT)

[Thanks, Murray.]

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Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (dir. H.C. Potter, 1948). Our household almost didn’t make it to the end of this one. Cary Grant and Myrna Loy are James and Muriel Blandings, and it’s really their dream house, as they both have many suggestions for the architect. Melvyn Douglas is a friend/interloper whose presence leads to a pointless subplot about jealousy. Not funny enough to be a screwball comedy, it’s merely dumb, with anything that can get knocked over getting knocked over, and anything that can fall out of a medicine cabinet, falling out. ★★ (CC)

*

They Drive by Night (dir. Raoul Walsh 1940). A Warner Brothers blend of working-class struggle and noir. The Fabrini brothers, Joe and Paul (George Raft and Humphrey Bogart) are truckdrivers, beset by crooked employers, repo men, and the dangers of the road. When the Fabrinis begin to buy and sell their own loads, they seem headed for success, but along comes Lana Carlsen (Ida Lupino): she’s the wife of a much older trucking magnate (Alan Hale) and has been lusting after Joe since she met him two years earlier. Lupino gets third billing but is the movie’s true star — venomous, desperate, and, finally, psychotic. Also with Ann Sheridan as Cassie Hartley, a smart, snappy waitress. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Three Annas

Anna Karenina (dir. Clarence Brown, 1935). It begins on a spectacular note, with a lavish party, a drinking game, and a dazzling tracking shot of a long banquet table: spectacle! As Anna and Count Vronsky, Greta Garbo and Fredric March are, for me, unconvincing: she, aloof; he, well-mannered and wooden. Aleksey Karenin (Basil Rathbone) is the villain of the piece, and the Levin–Kitty story, so important to the novel, fades away. No second child for Anna (with all the complications that brings), and nothing to follow her death. ★★★ (DVD)

Anna Karenina (dir. Julien Duvivier, 1948). The best of the three. Vivien Leigh is a much more convincing Anna; Kieron Moore is an appropriately glamorous and shallow Vronsky (an image of a man, say, rather than a man). And Ralph Richardson’s Aleksey Karenin is no mere villain. Here too the emphasis is on Karenin–Anna–Vronsky, and here too, nothing follows Anna’s death (save for a screen of text). ★★★★ (CC)

Anna Karenina (dir. Joe Wright, 2012). Finally an adaptation that has more, with Levin (Domhnall Gleeson) and Kitty (Alicia Vikander) getting proper attention, and a coda following Anna’s (Keira Knightley) death: after all, the novel announces itself as about families, not one romantic triangle. But this adaptation is deeply, weirdly ill-conceived: nearly everything happens in a theater, on a stage (all the world’s a, &c.), with dialogue (Tom Stoppard) and movement highly stylized. If this adaptation is an attempt at Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt (“alienation effect” or “distancing effect”), it fails, and the result is more like a Wes Anderson effect, with characters made to look at least slightly ridiculous. The best moment: Levin and Kitty spelling out their future with alphabet blocks — but then someone off to the side blows his nose (haha?). ★★ (DVD)

[And it would help if Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Count Vronsky didn’t look so much like Gene Wilder’s Dr. Frankenstein.]

*

John og Irene (dir. Asbjørn Andersen and Anker Sørensen, 1949). Danish noir: John (Ebbe Rode) and Irene (Bodil Kjer) are partners in a nightclub act and in life. He’s full of schemes and dreams; she’s sleepy and skeptical. Strong overtones of Detour, in an ultra-stylish low-budget production, with unusual camera angles and shadows galore. And, for some reason, excellent subtitles, perhaps from YouTube itself, where you should watch this movie before it disappears. ★★★★ (YT)

*

C-Man (dir. Joseph Lerner, 1949). Dean Jagger plays a Customs agent tracking down the jewel thieves who killed a fellow agent. The plot is thin, and John Carradine, who gets second billing, has almost no part in the proceedings. The movie has three assets: a voiceover, location shots of New York City (I suspect the influence of The Naked City), and a wild score by Gail Kubik. Several overly long fight scenes stretch things out to seventy-seven minutes. ★★ (YT)

*

The Long Day Closes (dir. Terence Davies, 1992). An evocation of a mid-1950s Liverpool boyhood (the director’s of course). The forces that oppress young Bud (Leigh McCormack) — church, school, bullies — are offset by the comforts of family, movies, and music. The film dissolves from recollected moment to recollected moment: talking about the light from the stars, watching a neighbor with cancer walk down the street. When I first saw it six years ago, I thought it was one best movies I’d ever seen, and certainly the most Proustian movie I’d ever seen, and it still is. ★★★★ (CC)

Related reading
All OCA movie posts (Pinboard)

“The back of your head neck”

Levin has asked Kitty a question.

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, translated by Constance Garnett, revised by Leonard J. Kent and Nina Berberova (New York: Modern Library, 2000).

Also from this novel
“The turning point of summer” : Theory of dairy farming : Toothache : Anna meta : “Brainless beef!” : “He could not help observing this” : “Official activity” : “All of this together” : “What they had no conception of”

[Kent and Berberova change Garnett’s head to the sexier neck.]

What’d I do, NYT?

I am disappointed to see that a comment I left this morning on the New York Times article about dfp-supporting politicians and "devil terms" has still not made it online. Humph.

My comment more or less repeated a paragraph of the post I wrote this morning, pointing out that Mary Miller (IL-15), with whom the article begins and ends, refuses to answer not only questions from the Times but also questions from local media and letters from constituents. I then described the content of my most recent letter to Miller, which encouraged her to watch the Ken Burns documentary series The U.S. and the Holocaust and asked whether she still believes that “Hitler was right on one thing.”

My only guess is that my quoting Miller's words — “Hitler was right on one thing” — got my comment tossed. Perhaps comments are screened by filter for certain words and names? I wish I knew.