Bottle-nose, black goatee

At a luncheon given by Mme Swann, the narrator sees, for the first time, M. Bergotte, his favorite writer. But Bergotte is not the “soft-voiced bard with the white hair” of the narrator’s imagination. No, he is “a stocky, coarse, thick-set, short-sighted man, quite young, with a red bottle-nose and a black goatee.”

Marcel Proust, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, trans. James Grieve (New York: Penguin, 2002).

Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)

“Give me a break”

“So what are we gonna do here, folks? I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break”: Donald Trump* to Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state. Listen to the call. Or at least read the transcript (The Washington Post ). It’s our president playing Mafia boss as the country burns. He needs you to find him some votes though. Or what? “You know what they did and you’re not reporting it. That’s, you know, that’s a criminal, that’s a criminal offense. And you know, you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer. That’s a big risk.”

[I changed “going to” in the Post transcript to “gonna” and made minor changes for accuracy. Also for accuracy: as Trump* says at other points, he needs 11,780 votes, which would give him the state by one vote. Which of course would look legit to anyone, right?]

Dizzy fingers

[Bettle Bailey, January 3, 2020. Click for a larger view.]

Yes, I read Beetle Bailey. And now I have to read it more closely. Because the number of fingers on its characters’ hands varies, from person to person, from panel to panel. This panel from today’s strip is just one example.

A cartoonist’s joke? Mere sloppiness? Hard to say.

Those symbols, by the way, are called grawlixes, a Mort Walker coinage.

[Post title with apologies to Zez Confrey.]

“Yet another baseless investigation”

“The attempt of these Trump Republicans to launch yet another baseless investigation is in keeping with their use of investigations to discredit Democrats since at least the 2012 attack on two U.S. government facilities in Benghazi, Libya, which killed four Americans”: Heather Cox Richardson’s most recent installment of Letters from an American is exceptionally good. Richardson was the subject of a recent New York Times piece.

Small pleasures

Buying toothpaste because the gauge is pointing to E, and then getting at least another two weeks' worth of paste from the old tube. Squeeze!

[No. 1 in what I think will be a series.]

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is another 2010 repeat. It’s by “Anna Stiga,” Stan Again, a pseudonym Stan Newman uses for easier Stumpers. I found it an easy puzzle, even by Stiga standards. One sign that Newman has, as Newsday points out, updated the puzzles running during his vacation: 38-A, nine letters, “Odin’s wife in 2011's Thor.”

Some clue-and-answer pairs I especially liked:

11-A, three letters, “US stamp series subject of 1945–46.” The rules about this stuff have changed, as I realized from the answer.

24-A, nine letters, “Plenty of nothing.” I was thinking of hot air and windbags. I suspect the answer comes from the world of sport. (It does.)

29-A, six letters, “Havana? No.” A blast from the past.

29-D, three letters, “HHH successor as VP.” Who’d have thought the name would be back in the air now?

32-D, eight letters, “Shakespearean title character.” Gotta reach a bit here, or at least I did.

43-D, six letters, “Tot’s coat attachment.” Aww.

51-A, six letters, “Marimba mallet material.” Huh. This clue made me think about how many musical instruments I’ve never tried.

An odd word, for me: the answer to 48-A, nine letters, “Hall of Famer, by definition.” But I see that in a certain discourse, yes, that’s the word.

My favorite answer in today’s puzzle, 32-A, fifteen letters, “Second-string players?” Though I’d hardly call them second-stringers.

No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.

A Berger’s Deli menu

I looked through my modest folder of menus, and there it was, circa 2002, a menu from Berger’s Deli:

  
  
[Click any image for a larger view.]

I look forward to the time when it’s possible to walk into a restaurant, sit down, and order anything on the menu. And this is quite a menu. Enjoy, vicariously. And don’t miss the H&H bagels.

[The colors are not consistent from page to page. Blame the lighting crew, all on vacation.]

Sort of quixotic

Donald Trump*’s effort to overturn the result of the presidential election is not quixotic. But Donald has one thing in common with the Don: they both tilt at windmills.

New Year’s Eve 1920

In hotels, no serving, only looking the other way. In other establishments, a different approach.

[“Sober Crowds Jam Streets of City on New Year’s Eve: Bigger Celebration Than for Several Years, but Alcoholic Revelry Is Subdued.” The New York Times, January 1, 1921.]

You can hear the wheels turning as the reporter tries out elegant (or inelegant) variations: “a peg of whisky,” “a pony of pure fire.”

May 2021 be a better year than the year that ends tonight. I want to borrow from D.H. Lawrence and say, Look! We have come through! But so many have not.

Not quixotic

An MSNBC anchor referred to Donald Trump*’s “quixotic quest” to overturn the result of the presidential election. Uh, no.

Trump* is out of touch with reality, and his quest is bound to fail. But his effort isn’t quixotic, not “foolishly impractical especially in the pursuit of ideals,” not “marked by rash lofty romantic ideas or extravagantly chivalrous action” (Merriam-Webster). To the contrary, Trump*’s effort is base, ignoble, and self-serving, a subversion of democracy and a cheap con. There’s nothing quixotic about it.