Gibson sues

Good news: “Trump Guitars hit with cease and desist from Gibson over use of Les Paul body shape” (Guitar World ).

I can imagine the excuse-making: “But we didn’t know — we bought them from China.”

*

December 9: “Trump Guitars backtracks after Gibson cease and desist and takes Les Paul-style guitars off the market” (Guitar World ).

A related post
These guitars are those guitars

Rural education shrinking

From The Washington Post, “Rural students’ options shrink as colleges slash majors”:

Many of the majors affected by cuts are in the humanities and languages, making those disciplines less available to rural students than they are to people who live in urban and suburban areas.

Two-tier education, for sure.

Recently updated

Words of the year Now with enshittification.

Recently updated

Words of the year Now with manifest.

In the can

[Beetle Bailey, November 25, 2014. Click for a larger view.]

In today’s Beetle Bailey, art imitates life. From a post about my part-time job in college, at a Two Guys discount department store:

I remember just one Two Guys co-worker who spoke of “break” as her own: not “I’m going on break” but “I’m taking my break.” We found her one Saturday in the garbage can aisle, hiding in a plastic garbage can, where, it seemed, she had been taking her break for several hours.

Vickie: are you out there somewhere? Or in there?

Mystery actor

[Click for a larger view.]

Here’s a hint: look closely at both views. I think this actor’s identity is gettable if you consider both.

Leave your guesses in the comments. I’ll drop a hint when I can if one is needed.

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Lunchtime. Here’s a clue: You may have seen her carrying an animal in a basket. But she’s not Judy Garland.

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The answer is now in the comments.

More mystery actors (Collect them all!)
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Twelve movies

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers. Sources: Amazon Prime, Criterion Channel, Hulu, Netflix, TCM, YouTube.]

Terror on a Train (dir. Ted Tetzlaff, 1953). In Birmingham, England, a saboteur plants a bomb on a train that carries sea mines. An engineer (Glenn Ford, playing a Canadian abroad) is called in to help. There’s little real suspense here: we can be confident that Ford isn’t going to be killed and that he and his wife (Anne Vernon) will be back together when the movie ends (neither of those statements will prove a spoiler for anyone who’s watched movies). The fun here comes from local color — a pub, a refreshment room, a train-loving eccentric (Herbert C. Walton) — and mid-century tech, with telephones and train machinery galore. ★★★ (TCM)

*

High Wall (dir. Curtis Bernhardt, 1947). Starring Robert Taylor, Audrey Totter, Herbert Marshall, and Amnesia. A WWII veteran (Taylor) is accused of his wife’s murder, and he doesn’t remember a thing. In a psychiatric hospital, he bonds with a doctor (Totter), and with the help of sodium pentothal, he begins to piece together a narrative featuring a sinister publishing executive (Marshall). The story is thin, but Paul Vogel’s cinematography makes this movie another good old good one from our household’s favorite year in movies. ★★★ (TCM)

*

A Lady Without Passport (dir. Joseph H. Lewis, 1950). Hedy Lamaar is a Buchenwald survivor awaiting permission to emigrate to the United States from Cuba. John Hodiak is an immigration agent. George Macready is the head of a human-smuggling group. Many interesting on-location shots of metropolitan Cuba, a great score by David Raksin, and closing atmospherics straight out of Gun Crazy (also by Lewis), but a drearily glamorous and at times highly confusing story. ★★ (TCM)

*

The Man with a Cloak (dir. Fletcher Markle, 1951). Joseph Cotten is the man, a mysterious New Yorker known as Dupin, enmeshed in the affairs of a dysfunctional household: a wealthy old French expatriate (Louis Calhern), a housekeeper and mistress (Barabra Stanwyck), a butler, a cook — all of whom are waiting for the old man to die — and his grandson’s lover (Leslie Caron), who has traveled from France to plead with the old man to give money to aid the cause of revolution. There’s a mystery to be solved — a missing will — and, lo, Dupin solves it. Sheer hokum, with clues abounding, and I’m not going to spoil the fun. With another great score by David Raksin. ★★★ (TCM)

*

13 West Street (dir. Philip Leacock, 1962). “I felt like an animal”: mild-mannered engineer Walt Sherill (Alan Ladd in his last starring role) is beaten by a gang of teenagers, and when the police (in the form of Rod Steiger) do little about it, Walt takes matters into his own hands. The interesting thing about this Death Wish-like story is that the gang members are from what are called “fine familes,” though maybe not so fine after all. (When Margaret Hayes plays the gang leader’s mother, drinking the day away by her pool, you know there’s trouble). The most compelling character here is the gang leader himself (Michael Callan), a budding psychopath whose unwillingness to step away from a confrontation brings about disastrous consequences. ★★★ (TCM)

*

The Common Law (dir. Paul L. Stein, 1931). Constance Bennett again, as Valerie West, a beautiful free spirit in Paris who leaves her much older lover (Lew Cody) to work as a model for the thoroughly respectable painter John Neville (Joel McCrea). Alas, John’s sister has ideas about the kind of woman her brother should marry, and Valerie ain’t it. A surprisingly grim story of gossip, rigid mores, and the need for dissembling: Valerie cannot even let John’s family know that they sailed to the States on the same ship. A strange surprise: Hedda Hopper. ★★★ (TCM)

*

Paterson (dir. Jim Jarmusch, 2016). I watched for a second time, with friends, after visiting the Great Falls, and I found myself warming to the movie’s depiction of dailiness: small bright spots (cupcakes for sale), adversities small and large (a crooked mailbox, a destroyed notebook), and routines (walking the dog, getting a beer). Poetry is everywhere in the city: a man in a laundromat, a schoolgirl waiting for her mom, a visitor from Japan. And I loved the absolutely non-condescending depiction of a city with pride in its hometown heroes (Lou Costello, Uncle Floyd). But Paterson (Adam Driver), the bus driver and poet at the center of things, is still a cipher. ★★★ (AP)

*

It Ain’t Over (dir Sean Mullin, 2022). A documentary about the life of Yogi Berra, with numerous interviews and great archival footage (I count ninety names in the IMDb credits). I knew something of Yogi Berra as a speaker of Zen-like sentience, but I didn’t know what a great baseball player he was, nor did I know that his appearance made him a subject of mockery on and off the field, nor did I know that in retirement he supported LGBTQ inclusion in sports. There’s a lot I didn’t know about Yogi Berra. The most exciting moments herein: Don Larsen’s perfect game and the Berra-Jackie Robinson dispute over a call at home plate. ★★★★ (N)

[I say he was safe.]

*

Plan 9 from Outer Space (dir. Edward D. Wood Jr., 1957). Everyone should see Plan 9 once. The first time through, its absurdities are guaranteed to amuse: the deadly serious Criswell, the laughable special effects, the incoherent plot, Tor Johnson’s “acting,” Bela Lugosi’s “double,” Vampira’s waist, the alien visitor’s passionate denunciation of humankind: “Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!” Repeated viewings tend to make the movie feel longer and longer and longer. Which makes me wonder: is there any great bad movie that rewards repeated viewing? ★★★★ (YT)

*

Mysterious Intruder (dir. William Castle, 1946). “Have we seen this?” “It doesn’t look familiar.” “Wait — this part does.” Yeah, and it’s still a dud, albeit a stylish dud. ★★ (YT)

*

From the Criterion Channel’s Noirvember Essentials

The Maltese Falcon (dir. John Huston, 1941). I’ve watched it many times, but never with as much appreciation for Mary Astor or with less appreciation for Humphrey Bogart. Astor’s Brigid O’Shaughnessy is a quick-thinking manipulator, trying out lies, one after another, to get Sam Spade in her corner, and the viewer realizes, at some point, that Astor is playing — brilliantly — a character who’s acting. As Sam Spade, Bogart is just acting, woodenly, I’m afraid. A detail I’ve never noticed before: Spade’s bed, visible when he gets the news of Miles Archer’s death at the story’s start, appears to disappear once Miss O’Shaughnessy enters his apartment: the Code at work? ★★★★

*

Road Diary (dir. Thom Zinny, 2024). Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band (and E Street Choir), preparing for and going on a world tour after a long hiatus. I’ve never taken to Springsteen’s music, but I found this documentary exciting and solemnly moving by turns. Mortality hangs over everything for a band that’s been together for fifty years: in the deaths of Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici, in Patti Scialfa’s cancer, in Springsteen’s awareness that he is the “Last Man Standing,” as a song says (the last living member of his early band the Castiles), in Springsteen’s comment that he’ll keep playing “until the wheels come off,” and in the set list created for the tour. The musical highlights, for me: “Letter to You,” “Mary’s Place,” “Nightshift,” “Last Man Standing,” and “I’ll See You in My Dreams.” ★★★★ (H)

[As I wrote to a friend who is a (huge) Springsteen fan, “It’ll rip your heart out. Mine’s on the floor.”]

Related reading
All OCA “twelve movies” posts (Pinboard)

Clarkson Diner

[152 Leroy Street or 586 Washington Street, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

The employees of T SIDE and WEST SID, otherwise known as the West Side Iron Works, would have had an easy time of it when the lunch half-hour came around: they were just a short walk away from the Clarkson Diner.

The 1940s.nyc website shows this diner facing Washington Street, with Leroy Street to the north, Clarkson Street to the south, and West Street to — that‘s right — the west. The site has three photos, with this outtake showing the diner to best advantage. If you click for the larger view, you can see a Bell Telephone sign, a Schaefer Beer sign, the name Clarkson, and several blurry pedestrians.

In the Municipal Archives the diner’s address is 152 Leroy Street. The 1940 telephone directory has the address as 586 Washington Street. But the diner itself (listen closely) whispers, “Call me Clarkson!”

[Click for a larger view.]

Today there’s a FedEx warehouse.

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

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Today’s Saturday Stumper

I began Matthew Sewell’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper with 1-D, five letters, “Back with bucks,” which crossed with 19-A, three letters, “Feng shui favorite with fins.” A fierce struggle ensued. When I finally read 35-A, thirteen letters, correctly — “What many football fans flourish,” not where, much of the puzzle fell together quickly. Note to self: read clues carefully.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

8-D, five letters, “Hustled.” Tricky.

10-D, six letters, “Particle accelerator?” Good grief.

13-D, seven letters, “Misters do it.” A weirdly good clue.

14-A, eleven letters, “Couldn't be better!” Sounds like self-deception to me.

24-D, eight letters, “Mexican rice milk.” It’s delicious, but I didn’t know it was rice milk.

27-A, letters, “Name on the cover of the history Broadcast Hysteria.” I think it’s easy to guess. Is it?

28-D, four letters, “Its seeds make caffeine-free coffee.” I had no idea. This puzzle is increasing my beverage knowledge.

32-A, four letters, “Paradoxical posing.” Oh!

33-D, four letters, “‘Justice Is Served’ utensil set seller.” Would that it had been served and we weren’t facing a four-or-more-year hellscape.

45-A, seven letters, “Court figures, formerly.” What sort of court? What sort of figures?

46-D, five letters, “Swung around.” Just a strange word, and not nearly as old as I would have guessed.

47-A, six letters, “Tweeted self-publishing.” Is it still happening?

54-A, four letters, “Place cited in Broadcast Hysteria.” Another easy guess, I think.

57-A, eleven letters, “Classy?” Groan.

58-D, three letters, “Half a kid’s meal.” Cute, and I just saw it spoken — caution, spoiler — by a cat.

My favorite in this puzzle: 50-D, five letters, “Email ancestor.” For sentimental reasons.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

A nice Englishman

[Nancy, November 21, 1955.]

In today’s yesterday’s Nancy, Sluggo spies a pedestrian: “Here comes that nice Englishman we met yesterday.” And Nancy, from her chair, reading: “Say hello to him
--- make him feel at home.”

Did this Englishman wander in from Moon Mullins ? I see a strong resemblance to that strip’s Lord Plushbottom.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

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