“Th’ Nancy ’do”

[“Low-Budget Horror Film.” Zippy, April 2, 2019. Click for a larger view.]

“It strikes when you least expect it,” says today‘s strip.

Venn reading
All OCA Nancy posts : Nancy and Zippy posts : Zippy posts (Pinboard)

Pocket notebook sighting: The Small Back Room

[The Small Back Room (dir. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1949). Click for a larger view.]

Sammy (David Farrar) wonders why he and Sue (Kathleen Byron) “trouble to come out at all.” She suggests that they start “an economy campaign” and “stay in for a few weeks.” Sammy checks his datebook: “Hello, I say, our last economy campaign’s not finished yet.” It’s all a little hard to understand without the rest of the movie.

More notebook sightings
Angels with Dirty Faces : Ball of Fire : The Big Clock : Cat People : City Girl : Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne : Dead End : Dragnet : Extras : Eyes in the Night : Foreign Correspondent : Fury : Homicide : The Honeymooners : The House on 92nd Street : Journal d’un curé de campagne : Kid Glove Killer : The Last Laugh : Le Million : The Lodger : Ministry of Fear : Mr. Holmes : Murder at the Vanities : Murder by Contract : Murder, Inc. : The Mystery of the Wax Museum : Naked City : The Naked Edge : The Palm Beach Story : Perry Mason : Pickpocket : Pickup on South Street : Pushover : Quai des Orfèvres : The Racket : Railroaded! : Red-Headed Woman : Rififi : La roue : Route 66 : The Sopranos : Spellbound : Stage Fright : State Fair : A Stranger in Town : Time Table : T-Men : 20th Century Women : Union Station : Walk East on Beacon! : Where the Sidewalk Ends : The Woman in the Window : You Only Live Once

More rocks

[Nancy, April 1, 2019. Click for a much larger view.]

Today’s Nancy, by Olivia Jaimes, has 1. truth (the “some rocks” trope), 2. fantasy (an origin story and squelched experimentation), 3. an image that has become a meme, and 45. rocks. Count ’em.

But what I like most about today’s strip is the care with which Jaimes has created a faux-Bushmiller panel. Notice the off-white background.

Here’s a 1961 Bushmiller panel with eight rocks.

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

Track

On the route that Elaine and I walk in the morning is a street about a third-of-a-mile long, running straight and curving sharply to the left at one end. Cars slow down — a lot — as they near that end and go into the curve. Watching that happen from the other end of the street always fascinates me. And I finally realized why: it’s like watching the enormous HO track in the hobby shop of my youth, a controller in my hand, my little car in the distance slowing down to take a curve.

[Yes, involuntary memory meets the slot-car craze. And now I finally know what “HO scale” means.]

Today’s Saturday Stumper

First there was Garrett Estrada. Now, with today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, Ernesto G. Prada: another name with no crossword history — another pseudonym, no doubt, for one or more terrific constructors. The same ones? After all, Estrada and Prada rhyme.

Like the Estrada puzzle, the Prada puzzle feels difficult, though it took me only half as long to solve. I saw 3-Down, seven letters, “Old school setting,” right away. I saw 5-Across, ten letters, “Literally, ‘nose-horned,’” right away. And then 6-Down, five letters, “Southeast Asian people.” But I could never say, with 13-Down, seven letters, that I was “Crushing it.” I wandered about, here and there, and likely spent as much time on the southeast corner as on the rest of the puzzle. But “‘Why not?’, these days.” That’s 42-Across, four letters.

Clues that let me say, Man, is this clever: 16-Across, ten letters, “Semi-pro.” 24-Across, four letters, “Jam ingredient from India.” 66-Across, ten letters, “Perches on the edge.” A clue whose answer I still don’t understand: 44-Down, seven letters, “Ball part.” I see what it’s about, but I don’t get it.

No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.

[Twitter says that Garrett Estrada is a clever pseudonym for Brad Wilber and Erik Argard. I finally get it: Garrett, as in Brad Garrett; Estrada, as in Erik Estrada. But why Ernesto G. Prada? Grandpa Stereo?]

“Noisy and shiny”

Euphemia describes her aunt Beryl:


Alice Munro, “The Progress of Love.” In The Progress of Love (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986).

Also from Alice Munro
“Rusted seams” : “That is what happens” : “Henry Ford?” : “A private queer feeling” : “A radiance behind it” : Opinions : At the Manor

“Twelve chatty letters”

[Zippy, March 29, 2019.]

In today’s Zippy, an outage of cellphone service has left most Dingburgers struggling to read newspapers: “I’m swiping, but th’ page doesn’t change!” Zippy, though, is quite at home with the printed (or handwritten) page. There’s nothing like a chatty letter.

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)

[Outage in? Outage of? Of, I think.]

My uncle Perry

L—d! The Perry Mason episode “The Case of the Bogus Books” (first aired September 27, 1962) centers on a spurious first edition of Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy. And who reveals that he’s a Sterne fan? Mason himself.

Related reading
All OCA Sterne posts (Pinboard)

Poverty and college applications

In The New York Times, Enoch Jemmett, a senior at Queens College, writes about the difficulties of applying to college as a student living in poverty. An excerpt:

We all knew of the SAT, for instance, but had no concrete idea of how to prepare for it. We knew that you had to apply to college, and for financial aid, but didn’t know the necessary or “smart” steps. When you’re 17, and pretty much doing it all on your own, the sight of all the hurdles you have to jump can be demoralizing, even paralyzing.

Jemmett is one of three students profiled in a forthcoming documentary about students in poverty navigating college admissions, Personal Statement.

Brunswick Sardines

From the CBC series We Are the Best, the story of Brunswick Sardines. The French and the Portuguese might have something to say about the assertion that Canadian sardines are the best. But I have no skin (or skinless and boneless) in this game: the sardines I buy hail from Morocco.

Thanks to Martha, The Crow, fellow sardinista, for sharing this link.

Related reading All OCA sardine posts (Pinboard)