A waterfront barber
At 194 Columbia Street, Brooklyn. Not quite Edward Hopper’s Early Sunday Morning.
Orange Crate Art
Today’s Saturday Stumper
“Manual art.”
“Now and Then,” the music video
This one really got to me, and it made me not miss the song’s middle section, at least while it played. Some laughter, many tears.
Epistolary Fritzi
“The secret to having a penpal is to avoid getting bogged down with responding to every small comment they make in their letter. If you do, you’ll just spend the whole letter recapping what they sent you.”
Crusts and chest hair
I like the way the Circus is stuck in an unyielding past. Brown paper bags! Cameras on straps! Landlines! Crusts and chest hair!
Beatles now!
I’m disappointed: they dropped the middle section of the song (“I don’t wanna lose you”), its most distinctive part, with unusual chord changes, and the part that, to my ears, makes the shift to the closing section (“Now and then”) so poignant.
Words of the year
From the Collins Dictionary, AI .
“What is internet, anyway?”
Internet Artifacts, from 1977 to 2007.
A last Beatles song
You know there’s a last new Beatles song coming this Thursday, yes?
Gloria Grahame at TCM
At TCM, Tuesdays this November are for Gloria Grahame.
Halloween tally
Six trick-or-treaters. We had nine last year. Fourteen Milky Way Fun Size bars dispensed, twenty-two left over.
PBS at WVU
“I think the level of reputational damage that the university is going to take will not be survivable. I don’t think that this will be a viable research university in five to ten years. And it essentially means that there’s no real tenure here anymore. And so nobody is going to come teach here unless they have absolutely no other choice.”
“Fried or boiled?”
From “The Daughters of the Late Colonel.”
Kids wearing masks
A photograph by Angelo Rizzuto, prolific photographer of mid–century New York City.
Elvis, not to be found
The Elvis shrine at the UIUC library appears to be no more.
Google, what the?
Search results for "national deans list."
A dictionary, done
“It was started in 1883 and now we’re done”: Svenska Akademiens ordbok, the official Swedish dictionary, analogous to the OED, has been completed after 140 years.
A technological trick
A revised Metaverse. No thank you.
Myrtle Ave. Drug Co.
Whoever owned this building knew something about monetizing: it looks like a miniature Times Square, minus the LEDs.
Cinnamon toast and orange juice
This news item strikes me as a respite from other news.
Today’s Saturday Stumper
“Brand now ‘Even Gravy-er!’”
“You were wrong about being done”
Gale Walden writes about her relationship with David Foster Wallace in life and in death.
Michael Tracy/Tracy 168 (1958–2023)
The graffiti artist Michael Tracy, Tracy 168, has died at the age of sixty-five.
What’s art for?
William Deresiewicz: “Art is for increasing life.”
The World’s Writing Systems
A beautiful use of the Internet: The World’s Writing Systems.
FEZiBO standing desk
Excellent customer service from a standing-desk manufacturer.
How to improve writing (no. 114)
A sentence from the NYT.
Mystery actor
It’s night, it’s really that dark, and her face fills the screen, just like so. I recognized her, but I knew she was in the movie.
Penny Park
Small change, embedded, at Penny Park in Evanston, Illinois.
Barnes & Noble redesigning
Different designs for different stores, and an emphasis on books. I haven’t seen anything like this at our nearby Barnes & Noble, which still teems with tchotchkes and whatnot, especially at the registers.