The ghost in the machine

I had the television on for “warmth” and was listening to (not watching) a few minutes of the Murdaugh murder trial when the voices got louder. Were they shouting about something? I looked up and saw the volume rising of its accord. And then dropping down to zero.

Trying to control the volume with either of two remotes — TV, Roku — was hopeless. I’d coax the sound upward only to see it drop down again even as I was pressing Volume Up. Or I’d watch the volume rise further after getting it back to a reasonable level.

I removed the batteries from both remotes. The volume continued to rise and fall.

I looked around the Internets and discovered that rising and falling volume is a common problem with televisions these days. A Sanyo problem? A Roku problem? Hard to say. I tried unplugging the television and waiting thirty seconds before plugging in. No luck. I tried a mysterious Roku remote trick: hit Home five times, hit the Up arrow once, hit Rewind and Fast Forward twice apiece. That’s supposed to reboot the Roku. No luck. One YouTube video advised that it may be necessary to repeat these steps several times. I did. No luck.

I finally figured out that the problem was a Sanyo problem: because when I hit Menu on the TV remote (now with fresh batteries), menu options would flash on and off and on and off the screen. When the options finally displayed long enough for me to select Sound, I chose Automatic, and lo: the volume was once again under my thumb. Although the word automatic better describes what the volume was doing without me.

[Post title from Gilbert Ryle.]

Another imaginary radio show

A fourth imaginary radio show, Soup’s On: On Soup  is all about soup: making it, serving it, eating it, storing leftovers in the fridge or freezer, though there might not be any leftovers considering how great soup is. All soup, all the time.

Other imaginary shows
Blanket Statements : Stemside : Tuck Points

[With no apologies to the podcast series On Being.]

Coffee, yay

“Coffee makes you happy”: in The Atlantic, Arthur C. Brooks writes in praise of coffee.

All OCA coffee posts (Pinboard)

[Gift link, no subscription needed.]

“Slightly blurred”

Arthur Grumm, a slightly blurred little boy:

Steven Millhauser, Portrait of a Romantic (1977).

Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard)

“The End of the English Major”

In The New Yorker, Nathan Heller writes about “The End of the English Major.” Here’s Amanda Claybaugh, a Harvard professor, speaking:

“The last time I taught The Scarlet Letter, I discovered that my students were really struggling to understand the sentences as sentences — like, having trouble identifying the subject and the verb,” she said. “Their capacities are different, and the nineteenth century is a long time ago.”

Which reminds me of something I wrote after listening to the podcast series Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong :

I wonder about the extent to which the decline of interest in the humanities might be explained at least in part by the difficulty so many college students have with the mechanics of reading. Figuring out the words is, for many college students, just plain hard — because they were never properly taught how.

Just one factor among many, but a factor.

[One aside: An English department is at odds with itself if its students get tote bags that say (or brag?) “CURRENTLY READING” but its professors think the department “should do more with TV.”]

Downtown

I drove to a conference in a city whose name began with A and found myself in a downtown square. Things were tidy and sunny, with a courthouse in the center and buildings two or three stories tall on all sides. Three larger stores had enormous display windows. The sidewalks were full of people of all colors, the women wearing hats, the men wearing jackets. One man wearing a pork pie hat was taking a picture of the courthouse. I thought he might be using a Rolleiflex but he wasn’t. I heard the film advance after he took a picture.

I noticed a soda fountain on a corner off the square. It had a large NEDICK’S sign above long streetside windows from which to serve pedestrians. I felt thirsty but shy, too shy to get a drink. To the right of the fountain, a row of brownstones stretched down the street, each with a massive reddish-brown sink attached to its front. I climbed up and walked from sink to sink before jumping down and walking back to the square.

I walked into a supermarket with three or four long, long aisles, with shelves no more than perhaps four feet high. I couldn’t find the coffee and tea, but I noticed one aisle devoted to books of upholstery samples, all opened on V-shaped platforms. They must do custom reupholstery here, I thought.

I ended up at a self-service outdoor Starbucks. The line for drinks formed next to the salad bar, and people kept cutting in to get salad and wait for coffee. I finally decided to keep my place, like a driver refusing to let other drivers merge. The cups were made of thin translucent plastic — for coffee? Two unmarked plastic containers with spigots held what looked like coffee. I took a cup and began filling it with what looked like coffee. Elaine came up behind me and said that it was tea. I dumped it into a trough below the spigots and began filling from the other spigot, but just an ounce or so of coffee came out. I dumped that too and went to a little machine, something like a remote control, to get a hundred dollars. And then we went back to the hotel.

*

“Only fools and children talk about their dreams”: Dr. Edward Jeffreys (Robert Douglas), in Thunder on the Hill (dir. Douglas Sirk, 1951).

Related reading
All OCA dream posts (Pinboard)

[Possible sources: trying to recall the name of the town with a mill Elaine ordered rye flour from (A-something), a photograph of archival materials in cradles, a conversation about our first taste of Starbucks (1994?), a conversation about plasticware in restaurants, getting plastic cups for water in a restaurant, pouring leftover water into the trough of the restaurant’s soda dispenser, rebooting the Roku from the remote.]

Recently updated

Mystery corner Now with a 1937 advertisement for Kane’s Food Shop and links to a color postcard and an advertisement for Tom’s Restaurant (the Seinfeld coffee shop).

“For good,” “forever”

[The New York Times, February 26, 2023, 7:00 a.m. CST.]

[Later that same day.]

I took a screenshot of the headline this morning. I thought it was wildly inappropriate, as the words “for good” invite, if only for a moment, misreading.

Is “forever” an improvement? I think I’d prefer “How the War in Ukraine Has Changed Europe.” No need for prophecy. But what I’d really prefer is an end to megalomania and wars of aggression.

NEAT?

I must carp: in today’s Los Angeles Times crossword, the answer for 13-A, four letters, “Old-Fashioned option” is NEAT.

Now — once upon a time, the Old-Fashioned was made without ice. And there might somewhere be a modern recipe for an Old-Fashioned made without ice. But an Old-Fashioned is made with ice. Look at a few recipes. It’s a cocktail made with ice.

But even if no-ice is an option, an Old-Fashioned is never NEAT. The Oxford English Dictionary:

Of alcoholic liquors: pure; unadulterated; spec. not mixed with water (or, in later use: soft drink, etc.); undiluted.

An Old-Fashioned is made with whiskey, bitters, sugar, and water (and, if you must, a garnish). It is not NEAT.

You may remember this moment of Internets hilarity: How to make an Old-Fashioned. “Everything good and mashed.” Not neat at all!

[I like this odd phrasing: “ice became normalized in the 1860s.”]

Mystery corner

[Mystery corner, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Today’s location is for your guessing pleasure. Do you recognize this mystery corner? Leave an answer in the comments, anything from a tentative guess to a confident assertion. I’ll drop a hint if appropriate.

*

Mystery solved: it’s the corner of Broadway and 112th Street, 2880 Broadway, Morningside Heights, Manhattan, long the home of Tom’s Restaurant, whose exterior served as Monk’s Café in Seinfeld. In this photograph, the street-level space was occupied by Kane’s Food Shop. The building was designed by Art Vandelay.


*

February 27: A reader shared an advertisement:

[Columbia Daily Spectator, September 27, 1937.]

Also now in the comments, links to a color postcard and an advertisment for Tom’s Restaurant.

Related reading
More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives