Hi and Lois watch

[Hi and Lois, July 31, 2026.]

I would have added “Click for a larger view,” but the Flagstons appear to be living in a field that’s large enough already. Poor Chip.

Related reading
All OCA Hi and Lois posts (Pinboard)

Notebook carousel

At Oscar’s Portrait, Geo-B (or someone suspiciously like him) buys yet another notebook. I can identify.

Which do you prefer? A? B? Neither?

In The New York Times, Karan Manjahar presents two different openings for his new novel, one from the galley, one from the novel as published, and asks readers (gift link) which they prefer. The novel begins with a telephone call from a lawyer announcing that the narrator’s father is being released from prison.

What I see in both passages: too much overwriting. A sample from the galley:

I could distinguish individual squirrels shrieking on the balconies of the gulmohar tree outside my dusty window. I could hear brisk ropes of water being let down onto the bottoms of plastic buckets, the swell and the music and the chaos of the family complex in which I lived with 20 other relatives — relatives I rarely saw but whose dramas gave shape to my dreams.

The family, in its tentacular way, must have had its own connections to Tihar Jail because the news got around quickly, and my Nokia began to jump and glow with texts.

And from the novel as published:

I ended the call with the lawyer and sat back in my scaly-walled flat, blinking against the onrush of hot green mulberry leaves outside the window.

In the tall days of summer, family members began to ring my bell.

The Times asks its readers to choose between the two. In these tall days of summer, I’d choose neither. “Individual squirrels shrieking,” “brisk ropes of water,” a family’s “tentacular way,” a phone that jumps and glows, a “scaly-walled flat,” “the onrush of hot green mulberry leaves”? No, no thanks. Another way to begin: “The lawyer said my father was getting out of prison.”

The invitation to compare began with a question from an audience member at a reading. And then: “As my book tour progressed, the dueling readings of the openings became a shtick I repurposed for other events.” And now further repurposed in The New York Times — and, lo, gaining publicity! Shtick we must.

*

My son Ben, inspired by a recent adaptation of an old poem, has a suggestion: “Dad’s coming home.” Ha!

[The paragraph breaks in the samples I’ve chosen are in the original texts. Telemachus, in Christopher Nolan’s film: “My dad is coming home.”]

Zippy and company

[“Ernie Sees All.” Zippy, July 30, 2026. Click for a larger view.]

In today’s Zippy, our hero is visited by the heads of Nancy, Sluggo, Phil Fumble, and Fritzi Ritz. It’s Aunt Fritzi who finally spurs Zippy to action. There are also “some rocks.”

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

A tide of umbers

At Oscar’s Portrait, Geo-B catalogues the umbers.

[Post title with apologies to Andrew Marvell.]

After the show

At Covent Garden Theatre, David sees Julius Caesar and “the new Pantomime.” He finds that seeing “noble Romans alive,” “walking in and out for my entertainment, instead of being the stern taskmasters they had been at school,” is “a most novel and delightful effect.”

Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (1850).

Related reading
All OCA Dickens posts (Pinboard)

[“Link-lighted”: by the link-boy.]

A joke in the neo-traditional manner

A six-year-old at work:

Name a bad game.

No spoilers; the punchline is in the comments.

Related reading
All OCA jokes in the traditional or neo-traditional or non-traditional manner

[“In the neo-traditional manner”: from a later generation and à la my dad, who was making dad jokes long before they were called dad jokes.]

Bostitch Staples

[Click for larger staples.]

I bought these staples for just eighty cents at a fading office-supply store some years ago. At the time I owned neither a Bostitch T5-8 Tacker nor a Bostitch P4-8 Stapling Plier. I still don’t. I just liked (and like) the packaging — a sturdy cardboard box, a little larger than a cassette tape or a deck of cards 4 5/16″ × 3″. And I especially liked (and like) the carefully rendered thumb, complete with lunula and interphalangeal creases.

An older package, for sale at eBay, says that these staples are “for attaching ceiling tile and walk plank / installing cornerite and other light tacking jobs.” The staples are still made, and still known as STCR-5019.

This post is the twenty-fifth in a series, “From the Museum of Supplies.” Supplies is my word, and has become my family’s word, for all manner of stationery items. The museum and its vitrines are imaginary. The supplies are real.

Other Museum of Supplies exhibits
Ace Gummed Reinforcments : Bic Accountant Fine Point : C. & E.I. pencil : Dennison’s Gummed Labels No. 27 : Dr. Scat : Eagle Turquoise display case : Eagle Verithin display case : Esterbrook erasers : Faber-Castell Type Cleaner : Fineline erasers : Harvest Refill Leads : Illinois Central Railroad Pencil : Ko-Rec-Type, Part No. 3 : A Mad Men sort of man, sort of : Mongol No. 2 3/8 : Moore Metalhed Tacks : A mystery supply : National’s “Fuse-Tex” Skytint : Pedigree Pencil : Pentel Quicker Clicker : Real Thin Leads : Rite-Rite Long Leads : Stanley carpenter’s rule : Tele-Rest No. 300

A Seminary Co-op tour

From the University of Chicago, a clip in which Jack Cella offers a brief tour of the old Seminary Co-op Bookstore. The new (since 2012) location is bright, airy, and still home to books a reader is unlikely to find in any other bookstore. But the old Co-op: wow. Just wow. Watch and see.

Elaine and I have been Sem Co-op members since 1988, when, as newish parents, we spent a summer in Chicago for an NEH seminar. I’ve always called the bookstore the Sem Co-op.

Related reading
Best wishes to Jack Cella : Two great bookstores

[The seminar? “Verbal and Visual Representation.” Not “Toddlers.” I was the participant.]

Emily Wilson on Nolan’s The Odyssey

Emily Wilson, classicist and translator of the Iliad and the Odyssey, says that despite what she sees as the film’s many faults, the release of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey “is still an event to celebrate.”

Notice though: Wilson is referring to the release of the film, not the film itself. Her review of the film in the London Review of Books is devastating. An excerpt:

Nolan’s Odyssey lacks many of the elements that make the poem great. It has nothing convincing to say about time, memory, history, war, or about the relationship between one warrior’s glorious return and the lives of his family, adversaries, comrades, friends and neighbours. It lacks psychological, emotional, political and ethical depth. Its narrative structure is gimmicky. The writing is abysmal. None of the characters has convincing motivation for their actions or words. There are no sex scenes, and all the food looks horrible.

And Wilson cites a line of dialogue that, like “My dad is coming home,” is reason to cringe: “Let’s get off this fucking beach.” Yes, let's. And go read Homer’s poem.

Related reading
All OCA Odyssey posts (Pinboard)