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Words of the year Now with allyship.

Heebie-jeebies

“The geek — he’s got the heebie-jeebies again”: a great line from Nightmare Alley (dir. Edmund Goulding, 1947), on TCM now.

A related post
“GEEK WANTED IMMEDIATELY”

Hallmark Holiday Movie Bot

Some are funnier than others, but for some reason, they all follow a pattern: Hallmark Holiday Movie Bot.

A little Hallmark nonsense

[Click for a larger view.]

This dialogue took shape as Elaine and I sat at the kitchen table holding cups of imaginary cocoa with both hands, Hallmark style. I took it upon myself to improvise some more in writing.

To the best of my knowledge, “skyldig till anklagelsen” is good Swedish for “guilty as charged.” Looking at previous posts about Hallmark movies, I now see to my astonishment one from 2020 that quotes “Guilty as charged!” as a line of cringe-worthy dialogue. Did that line lodge in my memory for later use?

I have no idea what this scene may portend. But I fear that He and She are about to stumble onto something like the Swedish original for Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.” That’s not very Hallmark of me.

A few more Hallmark posts
“Double-extra whipped cream” : Hallmark hypercorrection : Hallmark and Prufrock : Hallmark rising : Hallmark trees : The Hallmark Zone : Instant Hallmark

Another Brooklyn candy store

[4302 12th Avenue, Brooklyn, New York, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

One block up and one block over from us, this candy store was still standing in the 1960s, when it was called Pup’s, or Pup’s Luncheontte. The Pup’s of my childhood seemed to be something of a dive, a hangout, a joint. I think the Horton’s privilege sign was then long gone. I have a vague memory of buying a pretzel rod from a container on the counter. By the 1980s, Pup's had been converted for residential use.

Thanks, Brian, for finding this joint.

*

December 12: A comment on the public Facebook group Old Boro Park mentions a story that the name was supposed to be Pops but was misspelled. Another comment mentions Pup’s as appearing in Saturday Night Fever (dir. John Badham, 1977). It doesn’t. But in the movie, a car crashes for revenge into the large building right next to Pup’s, 4304–08 12th Avenue. You can see that building in these two tax photographs: 1, 2. In the movie you can see the original PUBLIC MARKET lettering, covered up in the earlier tax photo, partly covered in the later tax photo, covered up again in recent years.

After the crash and the fight that follows, Tony and company drive off on 43rd Street, going the wrong way on a one-way street. (Hey, it’s a movie.) You can see the intersection of 12th and 43rd in Google Maps.

Four more candy stores
4417 New Utrecht Avenue : 4319 13th Avenue : 94 Nassau Street : 4223 Fort Hamilton Parkway

Barbie mit Fisch

[My first Barbie.]

My friend Fresca sent this image my way. Thanks, Fresca. The source is a museum exhibition, Busy Girl — Barbie macht Karriere, opening tomorrow at the Ostfriesisches Landesmuseum Emden, in Emden, Germany. The museum website describes a 1960 Barbie “im mustergültigen Designeroutfit und mit Skizzenmappe unter dem Arm” [in an exemplary designer outfit and with a sketchbook under her arm]. The museum has substituted a fish for the sketchbook. And thus Barbie has made eine berufliche Veränderung [a career change].

Why a fish? Emden is a port city, this year’s host for German Fisheries Day. I want to believe that’s a sardine under Barbie’s arm, but it could be a herring. Sardines are smaller members of the herring family.

There’s a book that must have some connection to this exhibition. I will ask Paul Drake to have his operative in Emden look into it.

Related reading
All OCA sardine posts (Pinboard)

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Lester Ruff (Stan Newman) is an easy one. It is decidedly not rough. It speaks in the voice of a great recording by Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five: “I’m Not Rough.” A bit of difficulty in the southeast, but still a very easy Saturday. Unrough.

Some clues of note:

11-D, ten letters, “Rolling Stone ranked him just above Buddy Rich.” I wondered how far back the magazine’s list of the greatest drummers of “all time” extends. Answer: not very far. And I wonder if anyone had ever before thought of these musicians as adjacent. The difference between them as I see it: one plays the song; one played the drums.

25-A, five letters, “Op Art design.” Do you have to be able to explain an answer for that answer to count?

28-D, ten letters, “Kindergarten music maker.” I’ve been watching too much Peppa Pig.

35-A, seven letters, “Duffer’s putting impediment.” I read it too quickly as “implement” before setting myself straight. But I’m not sure the answer should be associated with duffers.

47-D, five letters, “Suffix denoting extravagance.” I know it well. Spoiler alert: this post explains.

52-A, nine letters, “Something Apollo 11 brought back.” My first answer was, I think, the likely one, and the wrong one. And that can be one mark of a good clue.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

A fused participle in the comics

[Dustin, December 3, 2021. Click for a larger view.]

Should it be “you hitting on me,” or “your hitting on me”? Dustin’s hitting on this woman may not be okay, but her fused participle is. From Garner’s Modern English Usage:

H.W. Fowler gave the name “fused participle” to a participle that is (1) used as a noun (i.e., a gerund), and (2) preceded by a noun or pronoun not in the possessive case — thus Me going home made her sad rather than the preferred My going home made her sad.

Fowler declared the fused participle always wrong. Bryan Garner is more judicious:

A modern rule might be formulated thus: when the ‑ing (present) participle has the force of a noun, it preferably takes a possessive subject, especially in formal contexts. But when the ‑ing participle has the force of a verb, a nonpossessive subject is acceptable, especially in informal contexts. When the participle falls in the predicate — as it usually does when case selection is a subtle question — another key is to analyze what the proper direct object should be. Consider this exchange: Is John in the shower? / Yes, I heard him singing. / Is he talented? / Yes, I heard his singing. The object of the first reply may be John himself (him), but the object of the second is clearly John’s (hence, his) singing.

Here, hitting has the force of a verb. And this brief conversation is nothing if not informal. You hitting is fine here. But for extra-grammatical reasons, it’s not, as Dustin is about to find out. Notice in the second sentence of this post: “Dustin’s hitting on this woman”: there hitting has the force of a noun.

In other comics news today, Zippy is Sluggo.

Letter Boxed lines

I’ve been doing Letter Boxed for some time now. But it was only this week that I realized that the Congrats screen shows the lines made by the words you’ve spelled. Watch:

 
 

And now:

Command-Control-Shift-4

A few weeks ago someone taught me about how to use a different keyboard shortcut (command-control-shift-4) to "copy" your screenshot to clipboard (on a Mac) and it has been such a gamechanger

— Anne Helen Petersen (@annehelen) November 19, 2021

It works.

Found via Laura Olin’s newsletter.