July 2008 archives
Archive
July 24, 2008 by Cyrus Patell
Marvin the Martian
Sixty years ago today, Marvin the Martin made his debut on the Looney Tunes episode “Haredevil Hare.” As a child, Marvin was my second-favorite among Bugs Bunny’s nemeses, after (of course) the Tasmanian Devil. Mel Blanc would change his vocal characterization of Marvin over time. In my mind’s ear, he will always sound the way [...]Archive
July 19, 2008 by Cyrus Patell
New Sidebar Feature
I’ve written a number of posts during the past week at my other blog, Patell and Waterman’s History of New York (ahistoryofnewyork.com), a collaborative project with my colleague Bryan Waterman. So I’ve added a feature that I’m calling “The Past Week at ahistoryofnewyork.com” at the top of the left-hand column of the sidebar. It’ll display [...]Archive
July 15, 2008 by Cyrus Patell
Stick Bug R.I.P.
Another of our original stick bugs went toes up today. It had, however, fulfilled its biological imperative: we now have more baby stick insects than we can count easily. We’re still not sure what to do with them once they start outgrowing their cage!Archive
July 14, 2008 by Cyrus Patell
Taking Stock at the All-Star Break
In a previous post, I compared the fortunes of the Mets and the Yankees as the month of June began. The Mets were 27-27 and the Yankees were 28-27. A lot has happened since then. At the time, I was looking forward to Joba Chamberlain’s finally starting for the Yankees and to Pedro Martinez’s finally [...]Archive
July 10, 2008 by Cyrus Patell
Schlesinger and Obama
As I complete the revisions to my manuscript on emergent literatures for NYU Press, I’ve been rereading Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.’s critique of multiculturalism, The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society, originally published in 1992 and now in a second, revised edition (1998). Schlesinger criticizes what he refers to as the “cult of ethnicity,” [...]Archive
July 10, 2008 by Cyrus Patell
XP SP3 and Microsoft Update
After I installed the SP3 update on three Windows XP machines, I discovered that Microsoft Update no longer worked. The updates would be downloaded, but the installations would always fail. Click below if you’d like to know how I solved this problem.Archive
July 9, 2008 by Cyrus Patell
Neologism Watch: Eventize
In today’s New York Times article about advance ticket sales for the early morning showings of The Dark Knight on July 18, we find this sentence: “In the public mind, opening weekends have been eventized,” said Thomas Tull, the chairman of Legendary Pictures and an executive producer of “The Dark Knight.” “Eventize” is not to [...]Archive
July 8, 2008 by Cyrus Patell
Signs of a New Era
I was heartened, at the end of May, to see George Packer’s review-essay “The Fall of Conservatism” in the New Yorker. Packer argues that this “era of American politics,” which was “born in 1966,” is now dying, in part because although “conservatives knew how to win elections; however, they turned out not to be very [...]Archive
July 8, 2008 by Cyrus Patell
