random things

Television generation talks to digital generation:

Little Kid in front of Christmas display window: What are these?
Dad: Reindeer.
LK: Reindeer! What do they do?
Dad: Uh, right now they’re hanging out in the window. Come on, we’ve got to go.
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James Glassco, Memoirs of Montparnasse: “We are both invited to a party in the suburbs tomorrow night. James Joyce may be there. We’d better take a bath.” This book purports to be the memoirs of a young Canadian in Paris in 1928-29; he claimed he wrote it then, but in fact put it together in the late 1960s. Either way, it's a damn good read.
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At the corner of Henry and Kane there’s a long wall that’s sprawled over with a hairy, multi-branching vine this time of year. It’s wonderfully gothic, most unusual for the neighborhood, and somewhat suggestive of a secret garden beyond. The long side, on Kane, has a doorway, which is closed, and dated 1918 over the lintel.