Ben Gazzara died this afternoon, on the anniversary of the death of John Cassavetes on February 3, 1989.

I thought this was really sad at first, but in thinking it through, it also makes sense. In a country that no longer makes things, I suppose one of our last commodities that can be bought and sold is our attention.

Sordid Snout
The Herald
Feeble Grass Moth
Dead-wood Borer
The Betrothed
The Little Wife
Serene Underwing
The Consort
Dejected Underwing
Inconsolable Underwing
Tearful Underwing
Sad Underwing
The Penitent
Sappho Underwing
Youthful Underwing
Darling Underwing
The Sweetheart
Joined Underwing
Semirelict Underwing
Once-Married Underwing
Girlfriend Underwing
Connubial Underwing
Delilah Underwing
Steely Underwing
Wonderful Underwing
Sweet Underwing
Indomitable Melipotis
Merry Melipotis
False Heather Drasteria
Confused Zale
Once-charred Punkie
Blurry-patched Nola
Beautiful Looper
Sandstorm Tumbler
Tricolored Angel
The Laugher
Fingered Dagger
Fragile Dagger
Splendid Dagger
Afflicted Dagger
Hesitant Dagger
Night-Wandering Dagger
The Hebrew
Cadbury’s Mystique
Cherry Agate
Overlooked Paint
Asteroid Paint
Scribbled Sallow
Turbulent Phosphila
Boreal Sprawler
Shivering Pinion
Sloping Sallow
Roadside Sallow
Straw-eyed Tentmaker
Tawny Tentmaker
Smoky Tentmaker
Adorable Sallow
Subdued Quaker
Cunning Woodling
Stormy Arches
Explicit Groundcat
Disparaged Groundcat
Cynical Groundcat

Carole Corlew.

A ground crewman who worked on my father’s WWII plane told me their B-26 Marauder was known as the “whore of the skies.” I feel like I can’t say the rest of his quote on this family wire. It crashed a lot. So use your imagination. This was about 15 years ago, during a ceremony for a large marker with the names of the men associated with Flak Bait when it was displayed at Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum. This old fella said this to me right in front of Miss Nell, who smiled politely and said, “Okay, well now…” and took my arm and hustled ME off.

Read between the lines of an old family recipe and you’re liable to read the story of the family itself. The scrawled marginalia and cooking stains, the collective memory of shared feasts—they might as well be alleles in the genome. Maybe it’s the chicken soup your aunt makes by the gallon during flu season, or the roast your mother overcooks every Easter. Maybe, if you’re lucky, your dad has taught you the secret to a perfect Old Fashioned, which he learned from his uncle, who learned it from his bookie. For my family, the recipe that defines us as a tribe, and whose origins best reflect our idiosyncrasies, is my grandfather’s babka.

If my grandfather didn’t exist, Philip Roth would have had to invent him. Seymour Byock grew up in Newark, between the wars, during the Depression and the golden age of stickball. He left school at 13 to man his father’s soda fountain, and a few years later he married pretty Ruthie Grubstein, literally the girl next door. He was Sy to his intimates, a constituency that comprised half of Northern Jersey. He was garrulous and funny, a humanistic Jewish patriot with an irrepressible passion for food. After he was conscripted into the Second World War, a clerk at the local draft office asked if, by any chance, he had experience as a baker. “As a matter of fact, sir, I do!” Sy said. This was not, strictly speaking, the truth. But he could grill a hamburger and pour a root beer float; how hard could baking be? Uncle Sam had tossed him a life preserver and Sy intended to seize it.

If cool is a species of bullshit obscurity, culture is now divaricate enough that we can all be cool. It’s not gold anymore. More like corn.

— name (@georgelazenby) December 28, 2011

Taco Bell be having they shit look good on commercials but that shit is sick!!

— Te-Aria (@PEANUTBIOTCH) December 29, 2011