Horse fail

In the aftermath of the Preakness Stakes, many references in the news to a horse failing a drug test. To my ear, that’s like saying that a car failed a sobriety test. It would make better sense to say that a horse was given or injected with a banned substance. It’s the owners or trainers who failed the horse.

Grim, grey, unaffordable

[829–849 39th Street, Sunset Park, Brooklyn. c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click any image for a much larger view.]

The archives say 38th Street, but in fact it’s 39th, between 8th and 9th Avenues, not far from New Utrecht Avenue. I like this grim, grey assortment of buildings and think all four of these photographs belong in one post.

Can you spot the mysterious figure in one of the photographs? Gotta click through.

By 1943, Allied Builders Supply Corp. had run into difficulty with creditors. In the 1980s, its address, 829–833, was still home to a building supply business, whose tax photo is far too blurry to yield a name. Today, 829–833 houses a Holiday Inn Express and a condo development. No more auto wrecking at 839: Model Garage has been at that address since at least the 1980s.

And 849? It still stands as a funky residence, now valued at more than $1.5 million. You begin to understand why we gave up on the idea of retiring to Brooklyn. These photographs are much more affordable.

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

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by “Lester Ruff,” Stan Newman, the puzzle’e editor. It was an easier (less rough) Stumper, but that didn’t stop me from missing by one square, at the intersection of 34-D, four letters, “It means ‘little’” and 42-A, twelve letters, “Emma Watson’s Little Women sister.”

The problem (for me): there are two equally plausible possibilities for 34-D, and if you don’t know how to spell the name of Emma Watson’s Little Women sister — that is, the name of the actor who plays that sister — you might have already dropped in the wrong four-letter answer, as I saw I had when I checked the grid. I’m not sure if that intersection is a deliberately tricky spot or an oversight, but I’m going to offer (in the comments) what I think is a better (fairer) 34-D clue.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

1-A, eight letters, “Earned C’s.” Clever, especially as the first six letters might leave you wondering what else to add. My favorite in this puzzle.

1-D, four letters, “Android ancestors.” I remember mine somewhat fondly.

5-D, three letters and 57-A, eight letters, “Spiritual leader’s resource.” I don’t get either answer.

6-D, seven letters, “Second shots.” Takes me back.

7-D, six letters, “Word from the Greek for ‘milk.’” I learned it from a friend not long ago.

15-A, eight letters, “Cleaner named for its ‘round-the-clock’ value.” Cleaner? Eww.

29-D, six letters, “Biblical commissioner.” Heh.

52-D, four letters, “Galileo’s ‘sunlight, held together by water.’” I took a (good) guess.

61-A, six letters, “Head rest in the Beatles’ ‘Octopus’s Garden.’” Whaddaya know? The word is indeed in the lyrics.

62-A, eight letters, “Request for inspirational assistance.” I thought this clue must be a pun about breathing.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Great Lives: Terry Hall

The BBC Radio 4 broadcast Great Lives looks at the life of Terry Hall, lead singer of the Specials.

I’ve been following Great Lives for more than three years. This episode is one of the best I’ve heard.

A related post
Terry Hall (1959–2022)

Turn on your hazard lights, &c.

What with people taking to the highways this time of year, I thought I’d repost some suggestions I wrote out in 2011:

If you’re driving on a highway and the traffic suddenly slows or stops, and the vehicles behind you are at some distance:

1. Turn on your hazard lights.

2. Leave significant space between you and the vehicle in front of you.

3. Keep checking your rear-view mirror.

4. After someone has come up behind you, turn your hazard lights off.

If someone coming up behind you is not paying full attention, your hazard lights might catch their eye and prompt them to slow down or stop in time. If not, the free space in front of your vehicle might lessen the severity of a collision.

I called the Illinois State Police to ask what they thought about using hazard lights in this way. A desk sergeant said it was the right thing to do and added the second and third suggestions. I've added the fourth for clarity. Please, pass them on.

[What prompted me to think about these things? Driving on interstates through rain and fog and using hazard lights when traffic suddenly slowed and I was the last in line. I also left significant space and checked my mirror, but I do those things without thinking and would not have thought to recommend them.]

Rapture

Martin Dressler has been looking at the advertisements in the cars of the horse railway lines. He has an idea about how to advertise the Metropolitan Lunchroom and Billiard Parlor.

Steven Millhauser, Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer (1996).

It’s only 1894, and Martin has anticipated the Sachplakat approach to advertising — the single striking image — that was to develop in the early twentieth century. He’s a man ahead of the times.

Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard)

Turn off YouTube voiceover

“A royal blue background fills the screen with white words at its center: Sony Digital Classics. Close blurry glimpses of white letters resolve into words on a black background: Topic Studios.”

And we who rented the movie would spend half an hour or so trying to figure out how to turn off the voice that was telling us what we were seeing on our TV screen.

That was the unexpected start to our viewing of Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb (dir. Lizzie Gottlieb, 2022), rented via YouTube. Was it a Roku problem? No. A problem with the YouTube settings? So it would seem, but the YouTube settings have nothing about accessibility or audio. The problem lay in the settings that were in place — how? why? — for this movie.

The solution: press the up arrow on the remote twice and move to the right — Channel, Captions, Like, Dislike, Save, Settings. In Settings, choose Audio tracks and change “English descriptive” to “English original.” Then watch the movie in peace.

[I recommend Turn Every Page with considerable enthusiasm.]

World of string

[Nancy, May 23, 1950.]

In today’s yesterday’s Nancy, we behold the world in which all kinds of packages were tied up with string. The grocer’s casual attitude — he’s turned his attention elsewhere, even as he replies to Nancy — changes in the strip’s final panel (what Ernie Bushmiller called “the snapper”), as the string unspools through the store window, past a hydrant, across a street, across a lawn, and into the sky, at the end of a kite.

I knew I’d seen this grocer before: he appears in the December 19, 1949 installment of Nancy, in which he obliges Nancy with some wrapping paper. (Some!) In a post about that strip, I wrote: “I hope the grocer has an enormous roll of string suspended from the ceiling with which to wrap packages.” He — and Ernie Bushmiller — haven’t let me down.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

“It’s a tall city”

Walter Dundee, engineer, and Martin Dressler, dreamer, laying plans for the Metropolitan Lunchroom and Billiard Parlor:

Steven Millhauser, Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer (1996).

Related reading
All OCA handwriting posts : Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard)

Some grades

[Nancy, May 22, 1950. Click for a larger view.]

In today’s yesterday’s Nancy, Nancy has offered cheerful news: she got an A in history. But Aunt Fritzi wants to know about “the general result.”

Related reading
All OCA “some rocks” posts (Pinboard)