Ben Stern (1921–2024)
He led the fight against a Nazi rally in Illinois.
Orange Crate Art
How to improve writing (no. 120)
There are, not is, plans.
Buttonholes
From a New York Times obituary for the tailor Martin Greenfield: a buttonhole-cutting machine that has cut 1,074,000,000 buttonholes.
In the Garment District
Buttonholes, eyelets, all gone.
Lyn Hejinian (1941–2024)
“But a word is a bottomless pit.”
Today’s Saturday Stumper
“Sign site.”
Ballaké Sissoko and Derek Gripper
Kora and guitar.
New directions in eating
Khao soi.
Kafkish
Gary Gulman: “One of the most pretentious things you can say is ‘Kafkaesque.’
Mystery actor
Who is she?
Alterations & Repairs
If you are in a city of any size, you’ve probably seen them in dry cleaners’ windows. The first time I saw these images, I thought they were honest-to-God representations of people who worked inside. O, the naiveté.
Two doctors talking
From American Fiction. There are doctors (medical) and doctors (professorial).
Confused
“You must have me confused with a normal person”: Larry David (Larry David).
“Happy Reunion,” four times
Paul Gonsalves with Duke Ellington, from 1958, 1971, 1972, and 1973.
Postal abbreviations
Gary Gulman explains how the states got their two-letter abbreviations.
Review: Carol Beggy, Pencil
This book is a huge disappointment. It’s a volume in the series Object Lessons, short books devoted to the contemplation of everyday things: barcodes, hyphens, rust. Other volumes in this series might be terrific. But Pencil is not.
Thinking about November
For anyone thinking about voting for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., or Jill Stein, or Cornel West, or not voting at all.
631–639 5th Avenue
Better known as St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
Today’s Saturday Stumper
“Actress name + actress name = airline.”
ə
The schwa in xkcd.
Recently updated
Is a two-page handwritten compilation of Thelonious Monk’s advice a forgery?
A Gamewell close-up
Like the mail chute in When Strangers Marry, this Gamewell fire alarm, too, was ready for its close-up.
A consequential chute
When I wrote four sentences about When Strangers Marry (dir. William Castle, 1944), I suggested that the movie has the most consequential mail chute in all film. As the camera closes in, let us pause to ponder a world with five daily mail collections, six days a week. Click any image for a larger view.
No coincidence
“I don’t believe in coincidences”: a substitute MSNBC host, yesterday morning. “I don’t believe in coincidences”: Jessica Fletcher, last night.
Jacques Pépin’s sardine salad
With giant sardines.
Twelve movies
The Holdovers and others.
So you can always get what you want?
Jimmy Cliff’s “You Can Get It If You Really Want” (July 1970) sounds as though it may have been meant — or must have been meant — as a reply to the Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” (July 1969). And Cliff’s repeated try sounds like a reply to “Satisfaction.” Or am I just hearing things?
A Calvino “over and over”
TOMAHAWK COGNAC, TOMAHAWK COGNAC, TOMAHAWK COGNAC.
“Is cognac waning, Papà?”
Marcovaldo is trying to teach his children some basic astronomy
Recently updated
It’s difficult to improve writing when you’re angry.