“Bagels against th’ current”
In today’s Zippy, Dingburg seniors remember “th’ seventies,” when there was only one kind of bagel.
Orange Crate Art
Today’s Olivia Jaimes?
Today’s Nancy is meta in more ways than one.
Today’s Saturday Stumper
“Competitors in the IPA market?”
“Way up in the dangerous air”
From a Steven Millhauser story.
Whatever became of the Lisa?
Do you remember the Apple Lisa? Do you know what beacame of it? A short film from The Verge: Apple’s Secret Burial.
Somebody Somewhere renewed
I’m happy to see that Somebody Somewhere has been renewed for a third season. It’s a show that deserves a much larger audience.
A minority report on Succession
Bill Wyman: “Succession was very much like what you would get if the Roy children themselves tried to do a grown-up HBO series.”
Longhand and a Smith-Corona
Robert Caro slows down the work of writing.
Editing
Words from Robert Gottlieb and Bryan Garner.
Taped to the lamp
The lamp belongs to Robert Caro.
F.S. Royster Guano Co. notebook
An antiques-mall find.
Pocket notebook sighting
From The Flight That Disappeared.
From 1945 and 1943
The fascist playbook, as described in a pamphlet for U.S. service members, repeats as the playbook of today’s hard right: cast one’s cause as “super-Americanism,” foment domestic disunity and hatred of minorities, reject the need for international cooperation, and label one’s opponents communists.
Where did the hats go?
What did men on planes do back in the day, when everyone wore a hat? A scene from a movie let me know.
Twelve movies
Big Eyes and others.
Recently updated
A thought about the John Berryman lines in Succession.
Books UnBanned
Books UnBanned offers readers between the ages of thirteen and twenty-one, anywhere in the United States, a year’s free access to the Brooklyn Public Library’s e-books and audiobooks.
Don’t like a library book?
From Take action for libraries, a handy step-by-step guide: “What do I do if I don't like a book at the library?”
Memorial Day
A 1942 photograph from an “internment camp.”
A despedida, Marie Elisabeth
A New York billboard for sardines.
Succession and poetry
Frank O’Hara and John Berryman.
George Maharis (1928–2023)
After watching all of Route 66 in 2013, Elaine and I wrote fan letters to George Maharis and Martin Milner. Maharis wrote back.
Today’s Saturday Stumper
“Encouraging words.”
A teaching moment
One time after I played Robert Johnson’s recording of “Cross Road Blues,” a student in the front row said “You should’ve played Cream.” I smiled and asked, “Where do you think they got it?”
Icicles, shrimp, and tamales
From Mack McCormick’s Biography of a Phantom: A Robert Johnson Blues Odyssey.
Sill bitar after all these years
Sill bitar is Swedish for “herring pieces.”
A dictionary in progress
Ten entries from the Oxford Dictionary of African American English, in progress.
Gray’s Papaya’s Nicholas Gray
The New York Times has an obituary for Nicholas Gray, the Gray of Gray’s Papaya.
About reading
Catherine Rampell, writing in The Washington Post : “Call me old-school, but maybe we should devote less energy to limiting what kids are reading and more to whether they can read at all.”
Mystery actor
Who?