From an interview with Bryan Garner

From Oxford University Press: Sarah Butcher interviews Bryan Garner, “the least stuffy grammarian around.” She asks how it happened that the teenaged Garner fell in love with books of English usage:

You’re asking me to psychoanalyze myself? Okay, it’s true. When I was four, in 1962, my grandfather used Webster’s Second New International Dictionary as my booster seat. I started wondering what was in that big book.

Then, in 1974, when I was 15, one of the most important events of my life took place. A pretty girl in my neighborhood, Eloise, said to me, with big eyes and a smile: “You know, you have a really big vocabulary.” I had used the word facetious, and that prompted her comment.

It was a life-changing moment. I would never be the same.

I will mention again something I’ve mentioned only twice in these pages: I was a member of the panel of critical readers for the recently published fifth edition of Garner’s Modern English Usage.

Related reading
All OCA Bryan Garner posts (Pinboard)

Crafted, baked

I noticed this morning: Pepperidge Farm now packages its bread as “Crafted Baked Goods.” The company is not alone.

Orange Crate Art is not friendly to craft — a vogue word, to be sure. School assignments are crafted. City ordinances are crafted. Movies are crafted — from scratch. The vitamin and mineral supplement Airborne is crafted, specially crafted. Poems of course are not just crafted but well-crafted. And some baked goods are handcrafted. No doubt from scratch.

“Most valuble”

I don’t follow sports, but I do follow misspelling.

Related reading
All OCA misspelling posts (Pinboard)

Screenshots from streaming services

It’s become increasingly difficult — or impossible — to get a screenshot from a film or TV show shown via a streaming service. In Safari the result is a black box. It’s reasonable for streaming services to want to defeat thieves, but fair use tilts strongly in favor of screenshots. How else is one to get stills with mystery actors, pocket notebooks, and telephone exchange names?

Two Chrome extensions that (still) work: FireShot and GoFullPage. Screenshot Tool no longer works. I’m using FireShot and GoFullPage with Brave (I don’t use Chrome), but I assume that they are working with Chrome as well.

Related posts
Screenshots and fair use : Streaming screenshots

Get back Blogger Quick Edit

If you use Blogger and miss the pencil icon that once let you edit posts on the fly, here’s a simple way to get it back. Save the code as a bookmarklet or call it up with a keyboard shortcut. I think bqe is a good choice, so long as you don’t do a lot of writing about the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.

[Found via Too Clever by Half.]

Use by

Useful stuff from The New York Times: “The Food Expiration Dates You Should Actually Follow.” And there’s always the exhaustive site Eat By Date.

One thing I don’t understand: the Times says that “Mustard lasts forever.” Eat By Date says one or more years (except for homemade mustard). But mustard often has a rapidly approaching “Best by” date on the container. Is that merely a ploy to sell more mustard?

Sauce from a jar?

The Washington Post tests twelve marinara sauces. The winner costs $10.49 for twenty-four ounces. Questo è pazzesco!

As the Post acknowledges, you can also make your own sauce. They offer a recipe.

I’ve been making sauce since 2010. It’s ridiculously easy, and I would bet that anyone’s homemade sauce would be better than any sauce from a jar. If I’m wrong about that, I’d prefer not to know.

Here’s a recipe I use. Here’s another, much simpler one for Coppola/“Godfather” sauce.

And here’s another more elaborate preparation, from Catherine Scorcese, filmed by her son Martin.

RAG

In today’s Los Angeles Times crossword, by Brian Thomas and Brooke Husic, the clue for 34-A, “Ellington composition,” is wildly off. The answer: RAG. No, just no.

It’s true that the earliest Duke Ellington composition is “Soda Fountain Rag,” but to identify Ellington as a composer of rags is to be, no pun intended, clueless.

It’s curious to me how crosswords seem to go awry about jazz. E.g., identifying Jelly Roll Morton as a SCAT singer, identifying Mel TORME as a “cool jazz pioneer.” No, just no.

Related reading
All OCA Ellington posts (Pinboard)

[Typing with at least — at least — 200 Ellington LPs and CDs in the room.]

Today’s Nancy

Olivia Jaimes continues to reinvent the Sunday strip.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

Bronx games

I found the first of these photographs traveling up Fordham Road in Street View of 1940s New York. I found the second by searching for the block and lot numbers in the archive of Bronx 1940s Tax Photos.

This recreational area (no address) stood near the intersection of West Fordham Road and University Avenue. It was part of the Old Croton Aqueduct Walk. In the first photograph, the building in the far distance is 2406 University Avenue.

[The Bronx, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click either image for a much larger view.]

When I typed the block and lot numbers into the archive, I was surprised to see that those are horseshoe players behind the shuffleboarders. Is that a bocce court in the middle? No, just wishful thinking, I think.

Notice too that there’s lots of laundry hanging to dry.

Here’s much more about the remaining traces of the Croton Aqueduct. No games, no laundry at West Fordham Road and University Avenue these days.

Related reading
More OCA posts with photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives : Bocce in Brooklyn