Recent content by Farace

Spellings of “Lichty” and “Litchy” have been alternating for several days now.

We felt the quake in Connecticut. I’m told there were reports all the way to the Massachusetts/New Hampshire border.

The first appearance of Vitamin Flintheart. I remember him from reading the comics when I was a kid in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Had no idea he’d been around that long.

An article in yesterday‘s Guardian suggests that the destruction of the monastery and death of civilians could have been avoided if the Vatican had taken action to enforce the neutral zone around it...

One thing is really bugging me about the Little Orphan Annie story line: Warbucks, millionaire industrialist, leaves his ward with an old friend, who is clearly barely scraping by. Doesn’t it make sense that he’d have left some financial assistance as well, and have some money regularly...

My partner, when she was in her 20s, lived in Newport, RI and used to encounter Ms. Duke from time to time when Duke “went out slumming,” in particular enjoying a club called Harpo’s, and sometimes exhibiting bawdy behavior. There were also rumors she was having affairs with her chauffeurs...

I have a memory of being two or three and having my mouth washed out with soap for saying “shit.” Very confusing, as all I had been doing was repeating something my dad said!

Of tangential interest, perhaps, the trolley museum at which I volunteer has in its collection the Mineola, August Belmont’s private subway car, which during his lifetime was stationed at his private subway stop under the Belmont Hotel. He had an arrangement with the Long Island Railroad that...

Back in the ‘80s I found a cookbook on the remaindered table at a local bookstore detailing just how to do this. Recipes tended to give cooking duration in miles rather than time.

And, after doing some digging, it appears that Pruneface did make a reappearance, but not until the early ‘80s. My mind was probably mixing memories of Pruneface with The Pouch, another Tracy villain who appeared in 1971, who had been an enormously fat man who lost weight, leaving large folds of...

I could swear, when I was a kid in the ‘60s/early ‘70s reading Dick Tracy in the daily paper (The New Haven Register) on the living room floor, that there was a story line where Pruneface made a reappearance, to everyone’s surprise.

We love the Patrick Stewart version, which I understand was a labor of love for him. It is perfectly cast throughout (Richard E. Grant as Cratchit, Saskia Reeves as Mrs. Cratchit, Joel Gray as Ghost of Christmas Past, Ian MacNeice as Fezziwig, etc.), and a bit closer to the original book than most.

At the trolley museum where I volunteer, there is one car that ran the night hours in New Haven, making the rounds between the restaurants, bars, and clubs, and it was known as The Owl. It was modified to have a concrete floor so it could be easily hosed out at the end of its shift. o_O

My first taste of sushi was in the summer of 1984. A friend brought me into Manhattan to a place near the Empire State Building called Genroku Sushi (how I can remember the name, I don’t know, when I can’t remember what I did yesterday). It had a large U-shaped lunch counter with a conveyor belt...

Not exactly on point with the newspaper, other than the ads that sometimes appear, and the occasional mention in discussion, but I thought it might be enjoyed by the folks that frequent this thread. If it has been previously discussed, I missed it, but last night we were looking for something to...