Richard Griffiths (1947–2013)

From the New York Times :

Richard Griffiths, the rotund British actor whose stage career reached a pinnacle with his Tony-winning performance as an idealistic but tormented pedagogue in Alan Bennett’s play The History Boys and who achieved popular fame in the movies as Harry Potter’s mean-spirited Uncle Vernon Dursley, died on Thursday in Coventry, England.

Griffiths played Mr. Hector in both the play and the film. The scene in which Hector talks about Thomas Hardy’s poem “Drummer Hodge” is still the best moment of poetry-in-film I know.

Trap streets

“A secret symbol of an analog past”: Trap streets: The crafty trick mapmakers use to fight plagiarism (The Week).

The Shoemaker

The Shoemaker is a short film by Dustin Cohen about ninety-year-old Frank Catalfumo and F & C Shoe Rebuilding (2810 Harway Avenue, Brooklyn, New York). Notice the several cameos by Bernhard’s cat and the brief exchange about shoe booths. There’s also a photo gallery.

Related reading
Shoe repairmen are the new typewriter repairmen

[The shoe-repair shop of my Brooklyn childhood, at 4602 New Utrecht Avenue, has been replaced by a delicatessen.]

Stepping away from the phone

Barbara L. Fredrickson argues for greater face-to-face communication: “Friends don’t let friends lose their capacity for humanity.”

[A sad and common sight: fifteen or twenty students waiting to enter a college classroom, no one talking, each student looking down at a screen.]

Paul Williams (1948–2013)

The music critic Paul Williams has died. He founded Crawdaddy!, the first magazine of rock music criticism, and wrote frequently about the music of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys. A sample, about “Fun, Fun, Fun”:

Notice that the rebellious, fun-loving, fast-driving hero of the song is female. Notice that in every verse, every line except the last ends in “now,” and it works! (One of the jobs of poetry is to capture not the actual words but the subjective impact of everyday speech.) Notice the understated, very specific, rhythmic sound of the words “fun, fun, fun” in the chorus, and the contrasting open-endedness of “away.” Notice the easy, natural, wildly complex interplay between the voices and combinations of voices. Notice the neat double meaning in the second verse, “A lot of guys try to catch her,” referring both to her elusive sexuality (“you look like an ace now”) and her automotive ability (“you drive like an ace now”). Notice how Dad’s futile attempt at discipline only serves to throw her (potentially) into “my” realm and bigger and better trouble. And I know you can't fail to notice one of the sweetest fade-outs ever, the brilliant ordinariness of the song totally transcended in two brief moments of soaring falsetto. Fun, indeed.

Paul Williams, from Brian Wilson & The Beach Boys: How Deep Is the Ocean?: Essays and Conversations (1997).

Related reading
Paul Williams website
Crawdaddy! archive (Wolfgang’s Vault)
Billboard obituary
Los Angeles Times obituary

Browser notepad

From Jose Jesus Perez Aguinaga, a one-line browser notepad. Type this text into your browser’s address bar to create a temporary notepad:



The comments appended to Perez Aguinaga’s post offer many variations on this theme. My favorite: this one by Vladimir Carrer. That I might never use the browser notepad does nothing to diminish its way-coolness.

[Me, I like nvALT, Simplenote, TextWrangler, and WriteRoom.]

Paper and pencil and the SAT

USA Today reports that of 396 students surveyed, nine of ten would prefer taking the SAT with paper and pencil. I am dodging the article’s headline, which includes the tired phrasal adjective t–ch-s–vv–.

Hands[-]Free Hair Rejuvenator

At Hammacher Schlemmer: The Hands[-]Free Hair Rejuvenator ($699.95). Too late for Ricky Ricardo (Desi Arnaz), seen here using a device that bears no resemblance to Hammacher Schlemmer’s product.

[The I Love Lucy episode “Ricky Thinks He’s Going Bald” first aired June 2, 1952. Image found here.]

The bookish expelled

“They dwell on passages. They ask difficult questions. They might even stare out a window for a while and think about what they have read. What’s more, they don’t always follow instructions, and their notebooks aren’t even remotely neat. We can’t afford that kind of student in today’s economy”: College Expels Bookish Students.

A related post
George Steiner on “the end of bookishness”

Orange newspaper art

[Click for a larger, oranger view.]

Gunther at Lexikaliker alerted me to this unusual poster: an advertisement in the form of a newspaper front-page made of Mandarin oranges. It’s the newspaper that’s being advertised, not the fruit. Background here; image here. I would love to have this image in poster form.

Does anyone out there read Mandarin orange?

Other posts with orange
Crate art, orange : Orange art, no crate : Orange crate art : Orange crate art (Encyclopedia Brown) : Orange flag art : Orange manual art : Orange mug art : Orange notebook art : Orange notecard art : Orange peel art : Orange pencil art : Orange soda art : Orange stem art : Orange telephone art : Orange timer art : Orange toothbrush art : Orange train art : Orange tree art : Orange Tweed art

[Thanks, Gunther.]