Today’s Saturday Stumper
“Actress name + actress name = airline.”
Orange Crate Art
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.
“Philosophic Guide”
A signboard from a movie.
Connecting dots
Data, information, knowledge, insight, wisdom, conspiracy theory.
How to improve writing (no. 119)
The Washington Post seems to think that only disability advocates see mockery of a stutter as bullying.
Mystery actor
Who?
Domestic comedy
“Think of all the money we’ve saved on dry cleaning.”
Katie Britt is a dirty no-good rotten liar
Pass it on.
A golden pig
I enjoyed an outstanding porketta sandwich last week, and it brought to mind somthing I hit upon a few months ago, a tax photograph of a Brooklyn pork store, Suino d’Oro.
Today’s Saturday Stumper
“Extra ambition.”
PBS priorities, good grief
When the PBS NewsHour panel began its analysis of President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address last night, the first question Geoff Bennett put to Lisa Desjardins, reporting from the House chamber was not about what the president said. It was about the interruptions.
Keyword: all
I liked these sentences from the end of the State of the Union address best: “Above all, I see a future for all Americans. I see a country for all Americans. And I will always be president for all Americans, because I believe in America.”
Recently updated
Word of the day: lukewarm. Now with its own faucet.
John McWhorter on prepositions
John McWhorter in The New York Times, stating what ought to be obvious: “The ‘Rule’ Against Ending Sentences With Prepositions Has Always Been Silly.”
José Andrés on sardines
“Oh my God, they are so good that you wish you were inside the can with them”
Slam the Scam
The Social Security Administration announces National Slam the Scam Day.
Vision Pro Television
A simulacrum within a simulacrum.
“Bad news about Biden”
“The New York Times has apparently devoted half a floor in its Eighth Avenue headquarters to a search for bad news about Biden, and then they reserve a space nearly every day above the fold on the front page for whatever grain of grim shit the Biden hunters have managed to come up with.”
Word of the day: lukewarm
The directions that come with a Waterpik say to use lukewarm water. Whence lukewarm ?
Postal consolidation
The United States Postal Service is planning to “consolidate” thirty processing and distribution centers. In Illinois, four processing and distribution centers outside of Chicago are slated for consolidation. That seems to mean that all outgoing mail will be processed in Chicago and environs. Snail mail indeed.