Aquacity and originality (Bloomsday)

From the “Ithaca” episode of Ulysses. In the early hours of June 17, 1904, Leopold Bloom washes his hands and invites Stephen Dedalus to do the same. The catechetical narrator of this episode reports Stephen’s response: no, he is hydrophobic. He hates “partial contact by immersion or total by submersion in cold water” and last took a bath in October. He distrusts “the aqueous substances of glass and crystal” and “aquacities of thought and language.”

James Joyce, Ulysses (1922).

Related reading
All OCA Joyce posts (Pinboard)

[Bloomsday : “the 16th of June 1904. Also: the 16th of June of any year, on which celebrations take place, esp. in Ireland, to mark the anniversary of the events in Joyce’s Ulysses” (Oxford English Dictionary ).]

SIGNS

[135 Lawrence Street, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

If you click for the much larger view, you’ll see that this photograph is huge. Many signs to read. And there’s a guy up at the window. I’m most drawn to the painted sign and the signboard on the side of the building. That wall, now blank, remains. Half Moon Hotel, or the infamous Half Moon Hotel, built in 1927, was a Coney Island attraction. In November 1941 — most likely after this photograph was taken — the Half Moon was the site of what seems to have been a defenestration. I’m sure though that the chef would have still been offer post-defenestration shore dinners.

Davega was the name of a New York City retail chain. If you look closely, you can see that the nearest Davega outlet was at 360 Something. That would have been 360 Fulton Street, a three-minute walk away.

[Click for a larger view.]

Many signs here, too, but no sign of swim suits, at least not that I can see. There is a reflection of a Thom McAn sign in the Davega window.

If you’re wondering about the large building behind the Lawrence Street storefront, that was the headquarters of the New York Telephone Company. Today it’s the BellTel Lofts, a condo building. No sign of the NYTC.

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

Trump’s “bing”

It's a small thing, but I think I've discovered the source for Trump's strange "bing" habit. Here is a compilation or Trump moments. And here — wait for it — is Joe Pesci in Goodfellas.

In each case, we see a storytelling entertainer, the center of attention for all those around him, able to intimidate and mess with people, and capable of sudden surprising violence. I haven't seen Goodfellas (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1990) in years, and I'm not really sure that the resemblance to Pesci's Tommy DeVito would play out in a coherent way. But who needs coherence when it comes to Trump? I saw this brief scene by chance and immediately thought of him.

I do know that Tommy comes to a bad end (whacked), which might click with Trump’s penchant to see himself as a victim. At any rate, it's not surprising that Trump would identify with a mob figure.

Am I seeing things here? Your thoughts, reader, are welcome.

*

June 17: Several reputable sources, e.g. this one, from 2012, and this one, citing a 2016 source, name Goodfellas as one of Trump’s favorite movies. Elaine and I watched it last night, for the first time in many years. The picture of outer-borough guys who are able to do or get anything they want is telling.

Today's Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by Kate Chin Park, whose last (and first?) Stumper appeared on April 6, and prompted me to write “Please, more KCP Stumpers.” And now that I’m quoting myself, I’ll add that this puzzle, like that one, is “a solid sender, difficult, misdirective, punny, and blessedly free of trivia and strain.” I looked around for a place to start and hit on 45-D, five letters, “Mes después de Navidad .” And then jumped around, here and there. 1-A, which felt like an impediment to any chance of succeeding with the puzzle, was the last answer I filled in.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

1-D, four letters, “Malfunction message.” A recent puzzle helped here.

5-D, six letters, “Bowls, for instance.” Nicely misdirective.

9-D, eight letters, “Ultimately plain?” NOFRILLS fits but isn’t it.

14-A, nine letters, “Campus coveralls?” An answer that I didn’t understand even after finishing the puzzle. My only excuse is that I’d call them something else. Elaine explained it to me.

23-D, eleven letters, “Deactivating but preserving.” A wild answer.

24-D, seven letters, “Candy striper?” The ones I thought of appeared in young-adult novels.

35-A, fifteen letters, “Cap wearer’s sassy slogan.” I thought first of what might be written atop a mortarboard. Highly unexpected.

43-A, five letters, “Puzz to crack.” An easy anse.

47-D, five letters, “Storms with precipitation.” It’s a trick.

49-D, four letters, “It’s from the Greek for ‘pie.’” I did not know that.

57-A, five letters, “Be a bumbler?” Groan.

58-A, nine letters, “Waiting periods.” The answer made me smile out loud.

My favorite in this puzzle is that initial impediment: 1-A, eight letters, “Outpay, but not outearn.”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Word of the day: tire

Why, our household wondered, are those things on cars and trucks and bicycles called tires?

The Oxford English Dictionary answered our question, or nearly did. It’s probably because the tire was originally regarded as “the ‘attire,’ ‘clothing,’ or ‘accoutrement’ of the wheel.” The first tires were, of course, metal rims. The OED definition of the modern tire begins on a startling, beautiful note: “an endless cushion of rubber, solid, hollow, or tubular.”

The dictionary would appreciate my adding that tires are also found tricycles, prams, wheelchairs, light horse vehicles, &c.

Avoiding the d-word

In The New Yorker, Susan Glasser writes about Donald Trump, who turns seventy-eight today: “If ever there were a case for age-related diminishment of a candidate, Donald Trump is it.”

Glasser politely avoids the d-word. But it must be said, as Drs. John Gartner and Harry Segal say, again and again, on their podcast Shrinking Trump, that there is a difference between aging and dementing: one major-party candidate for president has a brain that’s aging; the other, a brain that’s dementing. As Gartner and Segal also point out, psychopathy gives dementia cover: the former guy always says crazy things, right?

You may have seen Tamara Keith veer away from any consideration of the d-word on the PBS NewsHour this past Monday. After a brief compilation of odd remarks from Trump’s June 9 Las Vegas rally (excluding the death by shark/death by electrocution bit), Amna Nawaz asked for comment:

I just want to point out all of those remarks were within one 10-minute window.

Tam, for all his calls for President Biden to undergo some kind of cognitive test, it’s clear to say Mr. Trump’s remarks are not at all coherent in these rallies.

And Keith:

Mr. Trump’s remarks have never been super coherent in his rallies. I’m not sure that I can weigh in on how much they have veered in the last couple of months, but this split screen [Trump/Biden] has always been there, will always be there.

They are different people. And the people who stood in 110-degree weather to see that speech got what they came for. They got the greatest hits. They got some surprising things that they weren’t expecting, because the teleprompter went out, which just made it a little bit more fun.

Yeah, fun.

No master builder

The narrator’s father is an architect.

Anton Chekhov, “My Life: The Story of a Provincial,” in “Peasants” and Other Stories, trans. Constance Garnett (New York: New York Review Books, 1999).

Related reading
Chekhov and Larry David : Chekhov and Joyce

Domestic comedy

“I realize that’s a shallow thing to say, but I think it’s a valid shallow thing to say.”

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All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

Another Lassie–MTM connection

[Florence Lake as Martha Dudley. Click for a larger view.]

I somehow discovered that Florence Lake played Martha Dudley in the Mary Tyler Moore Show episode “Lou’s First Date” (November 3, 1973). A mix-up pairs her with Mr. Grant for a broadcasters’ dinner.

“Who is Florence Lake?” you may ask. None other than the actor who played Jenny, the Calverton telephone operator on the television series Lassie. Lake appeared in eighteen Lassie episodes between 1954 and 1962 and was the only cast member to serve for the duration of the show’s Calverton years. Her off-screen character was spoken to in many, many more episodes: “Hello, Jenny? This is Ruth. Would you ring Doc Weaver?” Jenny’s most prominent Lassie appearances: “Party Line” (December 23, 1956) and “The Phone Hog” (April 3, 1960).

[Florence Lake and, of course, Lassie, in “Party Line.” Click for a larger view.]

Florence Lake started in pictures in 1929. Her last appearance was in television’s Most Wanted in 1977. Here’s her IMDb page. Two fun facts via IMDb: Lake appeared with Ed Asner (who played Lou Grant) in The Girl Most Likely to ..., a 1973 made-for-TV movie, and

In a mid-70s interview, Mary Tyler Moore remembered the cast becoming exasperated with Florence Lake. It seems she didn’t see the character as elderly and feeble as written. Moore said Valerie Harper took special time with Ms. Lake to get the performance needed from her.

“Why another Lassie-MTM connection?” you may ask. Because Ted Knight (Ted Baxter) appeared as a traveling entertainer and World’s Greatest Ventriloquist in an episode of Lassie. And the dog-puppet from that episode showed up in a Mary Tyler Moore episode.

Related reading
All OCA Lassie posts (Pinboard)

[I loved Lassie in boyhood and love Lassie now. Straight outta Calverton.]

The Alitos and revenge

Timothy Snyder (On Tyranny) writes about “Modern revenge culture, explained by Mrs. and Mr. Alito.”

Here are the Alitos as caught on recordings: Mr. and Mrs.

An aside: the Sacred Heart flag that Mrs. Alito would like to fly is widely understood as a counter to the pride flag. A cursory search will confirm that. See, for instance, a comment left on a webpage selling a Sacred Heart flag.