Today’s Saturday Stumper
“Reasons to ask, ‘What was I thinking?’”
Orange Crate Art
Christmas 1821 in 1921 in 2021
Christmas shopping, described in the New York Times. Includes a blurb for a grammar book.
Sondheim with a Blackwing
From the documentary Original Cast Album: “Company” (dir. D.A. Pennebaker, 1970), Stephen Sondheim with an Eberhard Faber Blackwing pencil, his pencil of choice.
Domestic comedy
“She has the same glasses. But they look better on me.”
Streets
The PBS NewsHour, tonight, in a seconds-long obituary: “He rose from the streets of working-class Brooklyn,” &c. Ah, yes, “the streets.” A cheap — not to mention insulting — cliché. Not even the sidewalks?
Joan Didion (1934–2021)
From “On Keeping a Notebook.”
A pocket notebook sighting
From Young and Innocent (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1937).
A Hamilton House menu
Quite an array of choices, for an earlier American palate.
Bounce, no bounce
We better leave before I bounce him like a rock,” the man said, loud enough for me to hear. But I didn’t hear a thing.
EXchange names on the screen
From Nocturne (dir. Edward L. Marin, 1946).
“How to draw a snowflake”
Olivia Jaimes is exceptionally inventive today.
Hagar in the Oval Office
Joe Biden has a framed Hagar the Horrible strip in the Oval Office.
Recently updated
It turns out that spaniels have a history in sales.
Solstice
It’s my sunset, and I’ll post if I want to.
Advertising 101
A spaniel selling spark plugs.
Q & Q & Q & A
From Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book.
From the department of irony
I walked into CVS this afternoon. Two employees were standing at the register, each with a mask hanging from one ear. I asked if the store had COVID rapid-test kits available.
Verizon, grr
Disappointing but not necessarily surprising: Verizon might be collecting your browsing history. With directions for opting out.
Bombas, 25% off
I am not ashamed to share this link.
Twelve movies
Promising Young Woman and others.
Nancy and orbisculate
Nancy is pretending that she’s eating grapefruit. She’s also pretending to orbisculate.
Domestic comedy
“Our knowledge of Los Angeles is vast and shallow!”
RTF$
“Tucked into the second page of the syllabus was information about a locker number and its combination. Inside was a $50 bill, which went unclaimed.”
Mary Miller in The New Yorker
When the Republican members did address the matter at hand, it was in startlingly vitriolic terms. Representative Mary Miller, of Illinois, said that the committee’s work is “evil and un-American.” You know what’s really “evil and un-American”? Attempting to overturn an election.
What’s a candy store?
I discovered this morning, only partly to my surprise, that neither Merriam-Webster nor the Oxford English Dictionary has an entry for candy store. I think there should be one, because candy store does not always denote a store that sells only candy.
More candy store
From the New-York Historical Society, two more views of a candy store at 4417 New Utrecht Avenue, Brooklyn.
Today’s Saturday Stumper
“Now and then.”
Breakfast with Nancy
Styles in children’s breakfasts have changed.
Drinking and defending
“I may not believe in what you say, but I’ll drink myself to death defending your right to say it.”
Frank O’Hara was kidding
Joe LeSeuer: “Incidentally, it is Frank’s facetious reference to his pausing ‘at a sample Olivetti to type up thirty or forty lines of ruminations’ that led later commentators to assert that he sometimes wrote his poems on an Olivetti showroom typewriter. The dumbbells — didn’t they know when they were being kidded?”