Nancy, peaking?
In today’s strip, Nancy begins to wonder if she’s peaked.
Orange Crate Art
Attachment F
Attachment F follows Attachment E, a certification from a lawyer for the defeated former president swearing or affirming that “a diligent search” of boxes of materials removed from the White House took place and that “any and all responsive documents” accompany the certification. And then, as Steve Jobs liked to say, one more thing — just a sample of what the FBI found.
Cecil B. DeMille’s desk calendar
From the Life Photo Archive.
Vet
I finally thought to look up a word that’s long puzzled me: the verb vet. I had anticipated some weirdness in its past — perhaps a Latin phrase about trustworthiness for which it’s a one-syllable stand-in? Alas, the origin is disappointingly obvious, though not so obvious that I would have guessed it.
Sam Potts’s five-point plan
I especially like no. 3: “Heed the wisdom of Mickey Rivers,” who said this: “Ain’t no sense worrying about things you got no control over because if you got no control, ain’t no sense worrying. And there ain’t no sense worrying about things you got control over, because if you got control, ain’t no sense worrying.”
Six movies, six seasons
Network and others.
35 Perry Street
Was Merton living in this apartment when the WPA fellows took this photograph? I’d like to think that he was inside typing.
Sheesh
An MSNBC host: “a massive cachet of classified documents.”
Hatless in Bedminster
The photograph that accompanies Andrew Weissman’s New York Times commentary on the redacted affidavit says it all: the defeated former president, hatless, bronzerless, uncoiffed, at his New Jersey golf-club-cum-cemetery.
Today’s Saturday Stumper
“Parlor game experts.”
The redacted affidavit
I’m happy to share it via a gift link to The Washington Post : the redacted Mar-a-Lago search affidavit. And five takeaways.
E. Bryant Crutchfield (1937–2022)
He invented the Trapper Keeper.
Siren eyes
t’s worth pointing out that in the Odyssey, the seduction of the Sirens has little to do with sexual allure. What the Sirens promise is the full truth of the Trojan War. They claim to know “everything / that the Greeks and Trojans / Suffered in wide Troy.”
Problems with Blogger comments
Not long ago I found that when using Safari on any Apple device, I couldn’t leave comments on Blogger blogs, even when already signed in to my account. I found a fix.
Maggie Haberman, apologist
Stop giving him an out, Maggie Haberman.
Two TALs
Two exceptional recent episodes of This American Life: “The Possum Experiment” and “Name. Age. Detail.”
How Dr. Fauci caught COVID
Don’t let your guard down.
Misheard
“Every pen is different.”
A joke in the traditional manner
What do dogs always insist on when they buy a car?
Undone by an archivist
There’s something sweet and fitting about the prospect of a man with no regard for history and no regard for the written word (save for its monetary value) being undone by an archivist. If the arc of the moral universe isn’t exactly bending toward justice, it might at least be bending toward poetic justice.
“Home”
I cringe a little and laugh a little every time I hear a news outlet refer to Mar-a-Lago as the defeated former president’s “home.”
Leaving a Ph.D. program
An anonymous piece in The Chronicle of Higher Education, “Why I’m Planning to Leave My Ph.D. Program.” The subtitle explains it all: “My family can’t live on $17,000 a year.” Academia is the old sow that eats her farrow.
Where’s Mary?
“When reporters repeatedly asked IL GOP chair Don Tracy about her absence at the rally, he responded, ‘I don’t know where Mary Miller is.’”
Only Murders
I called it. I didn’t have the details, only a now-validated hunch.
“Trumpery insanity”
A startling phrase in the “Oxen of the Sun” episode of James Joyce’s Ulysses: “Trumpery insanity. The phrase, alas, is not political prophecy, and it’s not even of Joyce’s invention.
Dreaming of Paris
There we were, in a restaurant. Everyone was speaking French. How great!
Ulysses again
What I missed so much of earlier on: the characters’ humanity.
A pinned note
A note pinned to a wall in Alex Katz’s studio.
NYPL
An NYC tax photo, with the library looking like an urban Emerald City.
Today’s Nancy
Olivia Jaimes, breaking that fourth wall.