Writing materials
Dolly Parton, writing with whatever she has at hand.
Orange Crate Art
Chris Strachwitz (1931–2023)
Founder of Arhoolie Records. A different kind of record executive.
Legacy
We don’t use the word “illicit”, the host was told. The word is “legacy.”
Still obvious after all these years
I, an academic?
“We too have our stories”
From “The Princess, the Dwarf, and the Dungeon.”
Vertigo, up or down
From The Washington Post: “Vertigo is still the best movie ever. Or the worst movie ever. Discuss.” The writer, Ty Burr, leans toward “still the best.” I think so too — it’s been my favorite movie for many years. Dream, need, obsession, sheer weirdness: what’s not to like?
Reading in NYC schools
“Over the next two years, the city’s 32 local school districts will adopt one of three curriculums selected by their superintendents. The curriculums use evidence-supported practices, including phonics — which teaches children how to decode letter sounds — and avoid strategies many reading experts say are flawed, like teaching children to use picture clues to guess words.” Right on.
Benny would not be amused
“Duke Ellington, known as the ‘King of Swing,’ was one of the most influential jazz musicians of the 20th century.” A human intelligence failure? Or is that AI at work?
Heather Cox Richardson on the Second Amendment
“The idea that massacres are “the price of freedom,” as right-wing personality Bill O’Reilly said in 2017 after the Mandalay Bay massacre in Las Vegas, in which a gunman killed 60 people and wounded 411 others, is new, and it is about politics, not our history.”
Money and gossip
“You know, I thought these people would be very complicated, but it’s . . . they’re not. It’s basically just, like, money and gossip.” For me, that observation sums up Succession.
La casa dei Roventini
Johnny Roventini lived here. Down the block, I was an infant.
Today’s Saturday Stumper
"Shortened studies."
Medieval Nancy
Geo-B spotted Nancy in today’s Hagar.
A Gershwin and a Mongol
George, composing.
Look to the tip
Making my Apple Pencil work.
Foot and feet
Five-foot shelf, two-feet Sluggo.
MSNBC, sheesh
“As Ryan enunciated . . . .”
How to improve writing (no. 110)
It never fails: or, rather, it always fails. I look at Talking Points Memo and I end up tinkering with one or more sentences from Josh Marshall.
“Sushi”
St. Louis sushi, so-called, is a plot point in this week’s episode of Somebody Somewhere. St. Louis sushi is, of course, not sushi: it’s pickle, cream cheese, and ham.
Mystery actor
Who?
“Silent and black-and-white”
From “The Little Kingdom of J. Franklin Payne.”
How to improve writing (no. 109)
“He is a proud father of daughter X, son-in-law Y, two granddaughters, and daughter, Z all residing in Michigan.”
AI hallucinations
These are our lives on artificial intelligence.
Space cases
A quiz from The Chicago Manual of Style: Chicago Style Workout 75: Spaces and Spacing.
Eleven movies, one season
Somebody Somewhere and others.
How to delete a Tab Group in Safari
It’s a Mac problem. I’m glad someone figured it out.
Winckler’s
Just some candy store, you say? Just some luncheonette? Not so. At one time this establishment had its own matchbooks: Winckler & Meyer / Homemade Ice Cream / & Ices / Luncheonette.
Today’s Saturday Stumper
“Thumb-made preface.”
Are we in Bartlett’s yet?
“Are we having fun yet?” is indeed, as today’s strip says, in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, credited to Bill Griffith, page 838 in the eighteenth edition (a page that also includes R. Crumb).
On Duke Ellington’s birthday
Here’s a section of The Perfume Suite that became an audience-participation bit, “Dancers in Love” (aka “Stomp for Beginners”).