Vekkia book light

Curtains open in the morning? The sun is glaring. Curtains closed? Too dark. Enter the Vekkia book light. Small, sturdy, just right.

*

April 13: I should have added a link to this post: “Some Enchanted Evening.” More light!

A triple double

In today’s Mutts, Mooch announces that he is tired of being a cat. So, Earl asks, what does he want to be?

[Mutts, April 11, 2023.]

I think Mooch must have gone to my elementary school, where I once overheard an extraordinary triple double-negative: “I ain’t got none. I don’t want none. I don’t need none.” Which, obviously, I have never forgotten.

See also Stan Carey, who cautions, “Don’t never tell nobody not to use no double negatives.”

Make Something Wonderful

From Apple, Make Something Wonderful : Steve Jobs in his own words, in speeches, interviews, and correspondence. To read online or download (free).

The passionate surfer

Watching A Grammy Salute to the Beach Boys this past weekend (of which the less said the better), I put one and one together.

From Christopher Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”:

And we will sit upon the Rocks,
Seeing the Shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow Rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing Madrigals.

From Brian Wilson’s “Surfer Girl”:

We could ride the surf together
While our love would grow.
In my woodie I would take you
Everywhere I go.

Granted, one present a life of immobile spectation, the other a life of constant movement. But in each case, it’s a pastoral dream of a life of leisure by water.

Related reading
All OCA Beach Boys posts (Pinboard)

[Woodie: a kind of car.]

A bitters thought

In Succession, Kendall Roy (Jeremy Strong) has ordered bitters and soda on at least two occasions. He’s supposed to be (once again) in recovery. But bitters contain alcohol. Angostura, for instance, is 44.7% alcohol (89.4 proof). Granted, the amount of alcohol in a few dashes of bitters is miminal. But still.

Does this detail signify? In other words, do the show’s writers understand bitters? Do they expect the viewer to understand bitters? Is the viewer meant to recognize that Kendall Roy is still partaking, even if it’s in a minimal way? Or is this detail a non-detail, not even meant to be noticed?

*

Elaine posed these questions on reddit, where someone pointed out that there are non-alcoholic bitters. True. But asking for bitters and soda will return a glass with bitters that contain alcohol. My question is not whether it’s okay for someone in recovery to drink bitters and soda; it’s what, if anything, the viewer is supposed to make of Kendall’s choice, and that depends on what the show’s writers know about bitters.

[A glance around the Internets will confirm that not everyone knows that bitters contain alcohol.]

Some books are to be tasted, &c.

Scene: the library of Morpheus, in an aisle “where men and women stood leaning against the shelves, talking lightly to one another, and occasionally taking small bites out of the books they held in their hands”:

Steven Millhauser, From the Realm of Morpheus (1986).

Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard)

[Francis Bacon: “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.”]

Little moments of Succession

[Caution: If you haven’t seen last night’s episode of Succession (season four, episode three), do not click through to the interview. If you do, you’ll be met with a major spoiler.]

From a New York Times interview with Brian Cox. The interviewer has asked Cox if he thinks there’s any goodness in his character Logan Roy:

Oh, yeah. I think there’s a lot of goodness to him. I think he’s very misunderstood. I think it’s just all gone horribly wrong. We have these little moments of — and they’re not dwelt on — the scars on the back, the story of the mother, the sister, the relationship with the brother.

Little moments, not dwelt on: to me, that’s the problem with Succession. The past that would make the present more interesting is never very much explored. (There was a bit more last night.) I’ll quote myself: “I think my general problem with Succession is that I keep expecting it to be more than it is.” But I’ll keep watching.

NYT, sheesh

From a New York Times article by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan about Donald Trump**’s lawyers:

His lawyers’ own foibles are seldom disqualifying, so long as they defend him in the manner he desires.

Foibles, do your job! But I doubt that these foibles have passed the bar. So just switch the parts:

So long as his lawyers defend him in the manner he desires, their foibles are seldom disqualifying.

Or more bluntly:

So long as his lawyers do what he wants, their foibles are seldom disqualifying.

Related reading
All OCA sheesh posts (Pinboard)

63rd Street Super Market

[6302 New Utrecht Avenue, Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much, much larger view.]

Just a super-sharp photograph of a corner market — a super market, not a supermarket. I like the barrels, the pushcarts, the handmade signage, and the prices on those signs: 2 for 15¢? Sold. The rear door looks as if it might be the entrance to another business. Maybe an laundry? Boom Town (dir. Jack Conway), once playing, or playing, or to be playing at the Endicott Theatre (7010 13th Avenue), was nationally released on August 30, 1940. You should really click through to see what I’m talking about.

In the 1920s this building housed a real-estate agency. In 1950 the super market was called the Weisberg & Schiffman Self-Service Market. It made the news that year in a robbery. There was a second robbery in 1951, a more unusual one:

[The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, January 21, 1951.]

Today 6302 houses the D & S Bakery to the front. To the rear, the El Shadai Hispano America grocery store, offering “Grocery Productos Hispanos.”

Related reading
More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard)

[With details drawn from Brooklyn Newsstand and Google Maps.]

Benjamin Ferencz (1920–2023)

“In addition to convicting prominent Nazi war criminals, he crusaded for an international criminal court and for laws to end wars of aggression”: from the New York Times obituary. Benjamin Ferencz, the last surviving Nuremberg prosecutor, died on Friday at the age of 103.

Elaine and I watched a documentary about him tonight, Prosecuting Evil: The Extraordinary World of Ben Ferencz (dir. Barry Avrich, 2019). There’s an (extraordinary) episode of the podcast Criminal about Ferencz, “Palace of Justice,” first aired in 2018 and updated in 2021. And there’s a website, benferencz.org, with days’ worth of reading.