Last call

As 2023 approaches, be prepared, with a calendar guaranteed to work all year long.

[Click for a larger month.]

It’s free, made by me: a 2023 calendar, in large legible Gill Sans, three months per page. Minimal holiday markings: MLK Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas. Paper, staples, thumbtack, magnet not included.

You can download the PDF from this Dropbox link. If you don’t have and don’t want a Dropbox account, just hit Download, top left.

[I’ve been making calendars since 2009 with the Mac app Pages. Steep learning curve, years of good calendars to show for it.]

Nancy New Year’s Eve

Olivia Jaimes continues the Ernie Bushmiller tradition of taking holidays off: “Your Nancy Year in Review.”

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

Updating

From Gothamist: “Here‘s a list of NY Rep.-elect George Santos’ lies, deceptions and fabrications.” My favorite touch: “This is an ongoing story that will be updated.”

In other words, more lies to come!

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A catalogue from The Washington Post.

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And in The New York Times, a former partner tells of life with a fabulator.

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is an updated rerun from 2012, one of the two Stumper reruns that are appearing while the puzzle’s editor Stan Newman is on vacation. I wasn’t doing the Stumper in 2012, so this puzzle is new for me. It’s by “Lester Ruff,” a pseudonym for easier Stumpers of the editor’s making. This one wasn’t all that easy. Take, for instance, 9-D, seven letters, “Called attention to” and 18-A, eight letters, “Take hold of,” whose answers might look wildly wrong with only two or three letters filled in. A solid Stumper.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

7-A, eight letters, “Source of some blasts.” I was thinking of weather from the north.

14-D, six letters, “Secure offshore.” Tricky.

38-D, eight letters, “Freelance writer of a sort.” Feels old-timey to me, thought it isn’t.

54-A, four letters, “Some base men.” CADS. OAFS. SHORTSTOPS?

58-D, four letters, “Much of it comes from Sanskrit.” I did not know that.

60-D, three letters, “You may see it before long.” Playful.

61-A, six letters, “One of the ‘Sacred Books of the East.’” My first answer, and it gave me the southeast corner.

63-A, eight letters, “Highbrows.” Does anyone use the answer unironically?

65-A, eight letters, “Person coming back.” Nicely oblique.

My favorite in this puzzle: 59-A, eight letters, “Expression of wishful thinking.” Negatory.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Word of the day: game-changer

The WGBH station manager is nearly hyperventilating. From the Julia episode “Petit Fours” (HBO):

“Selling The French Chef to other stations — the possibilities — I mean, this could be a game-changer for us.”

Did people say game-changer in 1963?

Merriam-Webster first has the word (no citation) in 1993. But the Oxford English Dictionary has a first citation from January 13, 1962, from the Brainerd Daily Dispatch, a Minnesota newspaper:

They reckoned without game-changer Bob Sheflo and his cohorts.

That same article is also is the source for the dictionary’s first citation for game-changing:

Davidson drew his fourth foul and that brought in Sheflo for his game-changing antics.

One would like to know more about those antics.

Robert Sheflo Jr. (1943–2016) played basketball for Brainerd Junior College. From a 1962 Dispatch article:

Bob Sheflo came off the bench to score 26 for Brainerd, but the Ely big men dominated the boards.

The Dispatch is still going, now online.

I wonder: did the Julia writers check the OED for game-changer? Or did they luck out?

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December 31: As Pete points out in a comment, the show’s writers may not have lucked out, not really. The 1962 citations are sports-specific. It’s not clear when the extended meanings of game-changer (OED : “an event, idea, or procedure that produces a significant shift in the current way of thinking about or doing something”) and game-changing (“that produces,” &c.) came into play. I’ve had no luck trying to figure it out via English-Corpora.org and Google Books. But it’s still the case that the Brainerd Daily Dispatch has the first citations for the two words.

[About Julia: Our household is five episodes in. One half of the household likes this series much more than the other does. The other half is thinking about French onion soup. Both halves have great esteem for the real Julia Child.]

Hi and Lois watch

I noticed a Flagston thermostat, or “thermostat,” in 2009. And an improved thermostat in 2012. A “thermostat” returns in today’s Hi and Lois, as the strip mines the apparently inexhaustible comic premise that Dad will see his family freeze rather than turn up the heat. Thrifty Dad! Now the whole family can fight over Trixie’s sunbeam.

[Hi and Lois, December 30, 2022. Click for a larger view.]

Perhaps the colorist wanted to call attention to the thing on the wall. And Nest thermostats do make use of color. But not like that. I suspect that the Flagston wall is meant to hold what it appeared to hold in 2012: a Honeywell T87, a classic mid-century design. Allow me:

[Hi and Lois revised, December 30, 2022. Click for a larger view.]

Related reading
All OCA Hi and Lois posts (Pinboard)

“Older person”

In The Washington Post, Gary Abernathy writes about ageism and how it grates:

How should we respectfully refer to old people? I’ve seen people 60-plus still refer to themselves as “middle aged,” but let’s be a little more realistic and cut that off at least by 59. The word “old,” however, is such a pejorative that it should not be used alone. “Older person” is preferable. I hesitate to use “elderly” at all, which implies not just old age but a feeble condition. I’ve always despised “senior citizen” and references to the “golden years.” How ’bout “best people ever?” That’s good.

And:

I sometimes notice younger people in social settings looking past me or through me, as though I’m almost invisible.

Yep.

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I just remembered and found something that I wrote in an e-mail to a friend earlier this year. Here it is, with one slip fixed:

Old — when I bought the graphic novels New Kid and Class Act at Barnes & Nobility, the clerk mentioned its their new popularity and that of Maus, and I mentioned that I was the first person in my English department to teach a graphic novel, namely Maus. Years ago, I said, shortly after the invention of printing. She didn’t laugh, didn’t bat an eye. This seems to happen as one becomes older — what you say goes right past people. Grr. And when I’ve acquired such wisdom!

[I changed the ‘bout in the Abernathy passage to ’bout. ’Cos that’s how I roll.]

A dawn hater

From The Dark Corner (dir. Hentry Hathaway, 1946). Clifton Webb as Hardy Cathcart, gallery owner:

“I probably shan’t return much before dawn. How I detest the dawn. The grass always looks like it’s been left out all night.”

The Dark Corner is streaming at the Criterion Channel. “It was better on a first viewing in 2010,” says I. But still worth watching.

Also from this movie
EXchange names on screen

EXchange names on screen

[The Dark Corner (dir. Henry Hathaway, 1946.]

The reality effect again. Nearly all these names appear in the 1940 Manhattan telephone directory. This page must be from the listings in a commercial directory. If you’re a detective and it’s your directory, you’re free to mark up the pages in your search for a white suit stained with blood.

More telephone EXchange names on screen
Act of Violence : The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse : Armored Car Robbery : Baby Face : Black Angel : Black Widow : Blast of Silence : The Blue Dahlia : Blue Gardenia : Boardwalk Empire : Born Yesterday : The Brasher Doubloon : The Brothers Rico : The Case Against Brooklyn : Chinatown : Craig’s Wife : Danger Zone : The Dark Corner : Dark Passage : Deception : Deux hommes dans Manhattan : Dial Red 0 : Dick Tracy’s Deception : Down Three Dark Streets : Dream House : East Side, West Side : Escape in the Fog : Fallen Angel : Framed : Hollywood Story : Kiss of Death : The Little Giant : Loophole : The Man Who Cheated Himself : Modern Marvels : Murder by Contract : Murder, My Sweet : My Week with Marilyn : Naked City (1) : Naked City (2) : Naked City (3) : Naked City (4) : Naked City (5) : Naked City (6) : Naked City (7) : Naked City (8) : Naked City (9) : Nightfall : Nightmare Alley : Nocturne : Old Acquaintance : Out of the Past : Perry Mason : Pitfall : The Public Enemy : Railroaded! : Red Light : She Played with Fire : Side Street : The Slender Thread : Slightly Scarlet : Stage Fright : Sweet Smell of Success (1) : Sweet Smell of Success (2) : Tension : Till the End of Time : This Gun for Hire : The Unfaithful : Vice Squad : Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

MSNBC, sheesh

“. . . whomever is going to be Speaker.”

The simple check: drop in a pronoun. Her is going to be Speaker? Him is? They are? No. Whomever is? No.

Related reading
All OCA MSNBC, sheesh posts (Pinboard)