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I feel unexpectedly touched or startled by obituaries for people I'm only obliquely aware of. One of the New Yorker cartoonists died last week, Leo Cullum. I don't know any of the cartoonists' names besides Roz Chast, and Cullum's cartoons aren't a huge thing to take for granted, but it's still a little surprise to recognize that there are little things that you do take for granted. I don't know how you'd describe his wor: the ink-washy ones where the eyes kind of blend together? I don't take his cartoons as iconic, but they were unpretentious and reliable and I liked them being in the magazine.
This week saw the passing of Charlie O'Donnell, 78, who was the announcer for Wheel of Fortune. The voice that says "Wheel! of! Fortune!" seems too permanent of a small cultural ubiquity to be attached to an obituary, and like the New Yorker cartoons I never really thought fully of a person being behind it. But there you go.
This week saw the passing of Charlie O'Donnell, 78, who was the announcer for Wheel of Fortune. The voice that says "Wheel! of! Fortune!" seems too permanent of a small cultural ubiquity to be attached to an obituary, and like the New Yorker cartoons I never really thought fully of a person being behind it. But there you go.
5 Comments:
I'm not commenting on this post specifically, just the blog.
I was thinking about Seasonal Affective Disorder, which always makes me think about this defining post, which then made me want to check in with things mild.
Moving to a new apartment with eastern exposure is the approach we took to the SAD problem this year; we'll see how it works out.
I hope you all are well, particularly Nate and Mike, since I'm not getting any clues about you from the blog.
All the best, Mandy
Yeah, I'm too stupid to make a link in html. You know what I'm talking about. http://ofmildinterest.blogspot.com/2007/11/seasonal-affective-disorder-guide.html
I'll link that up. It is a classic of the blog.
Getting lumped in with Mike on blog participation stings a little, but I have been pretty derelict on the mild-interesting. (Largely due to an effort to blog my way through Shostakovich's complete works, which is sucking up much of my blog-oxygen.) I guess the short answer is that I'm doing pretty well and feeling pretty well-adjusted, considering I'm working slightly too hard these days, constantly marinating my brain in the tragedy-satire of the above-noted composer's pre-government-smackdown works, and caring too much about the Steelers.
I don't really have a SAD solution for Portland this winter, which bodes ill since the summer was pretty dismal. My best guess would be that there'll be a populace-wide freakout sometime in mid-January and the whole city will blaze up in a desperate, self-immolating Yule fire of sorts. Of course that was my prediction last year too and everybody just sort of put on their raincoats and went about their business with a little bit of casual complaining. Either works for me.
I'd've typed it "blogxygen".
Yeah, good portmanteau. Gotta keep the brain blogxygenated.
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