June, 2025

"This Just In..."

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Wow. We're in June!

To celebrate we've got a plethora of nonsense and silliness that is fitting for the beginning of summer. We've got a few quizzes, a chance to show off the worst dress you've ever owned and some heady thoughts on travel, father's love for their daughters, a nice dish of pasta, philosophy and twins. To say nothing of a great deal on Mitsubishi A/C.

So jump in - to summer - and this issue of This Just In...

Excerpts from letters received by the British pensions office, quoted in George Lyttelton’s Commonplace Book,



• Mrs R. has no clothes, has not had any for many years. The clergy have been visiting her.



• In reply to your letter, I have already cohabited with your officers, so far without any result.

• You have changed my little boy to a little girl. Will this make any difference?

• Please send money at once, as I have fallen in errors with my landlord.

• I have no children, as my husband is a bus-driver and works all day and night.

• In accordance with your instructions, I have given birth to twins in the enclosed envelope.

• I have been in bed with the doctor for a week, and he does not seem to be doing me any good. If things don’t improve I shall have to get another doctor.

• Milk is wanted for the baby, and the father is unable to supply it.

• The teeth on top are all right, but the ones in my bottom are hurting terribly.

If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.

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One of a kind.

A magical voice and a politically progressive voice for people across the world. Who is he? Tell us here and you may win a $25 Amazon gift card.

Last month 94 people including Janelle S, Theresa C and Denise G. recognized Philip Seymour Hoffman, while Suzanne C., Bruce A. and James O. and 206 of you unraveled the quiz: Fork Over What You Owe!

Thanks for playing and good luck.

We’re not here to tell you about flight delays, radars on the fritz, middle-seat horrors and waiters who don’t have the courtesy to know more than four languages.

No…we’ll simply say, traveling’s been a pain for a long time.

The 1937 phrasebook Collins’ Pocket Interpreters: France paints an alarming picture of a typical visit to France:

I cannot open my case.

I have lost my keys.

I did not know that I had to pay.

I cannot find my porter.

Excuse me, sir, that seat is mine.

I cannot find my ticket!

I have left my gloves (my purse) in the dining car.

I feel sick.

The noise is terrible.

Did you not get my letter?

I cannot sleep at night, there is so much noise.

There are no towels here.

The sheets on this bed are damp.

I have seen a mouse in the room.

These shoes are not mine.

The radiator doesn’t work.

This is not clean, bring me another.

I can’t eat this. Take it away!

The water is too hot, you are scalding me!

It doesn’t work.

This doesn’t smell very nice.

There is a mistake in the bill.

I am lost.

Someone robbed me.

I shall call a policeman.

That man is following me everywhere.

There has been an accident!

She has been run over.

He is losing blood.

He has lost consciousness.



James Thurber, who came upon the book in a London bookshop, described it as a “melancholy narrative poem” and “a dramatic tragedy of an overwhelming and original kind.” “I have come across a number of these helps-for-travelers,” he wrote, “but none has the heavy impact, the dark, cumulative power of Collins’. …

The volume contains three times as many expressions to use when one is in trouble as when everything is going all right.”

PLUS



A striking passage from Avrahm Yarmolinsky’s 1959 biography of Ivan Turgenev:

By the end of May [1840], the traveler was back in Berlin. Before he reached the capital he touched at Leghorn, Pisa, Genoa, sailed on Lago Maggiore, traveled to St. Gotthard in a sleigh, visited Lucerne, Basel, Mannheim, Mainz, Frankfort and Leipzig, all within thirteen days.

In the same period he managed to lose an umbrella, a cloak, a box, a walking stick, an opera glass, a hat, a pillow, a pen knife, a purse, three towels, two neckerchiefs, two shirts, and, for a short time, his heart.

Still there's always…

This remarkable 1908 photograph captures the Long Island Motor Parkway (also known as the Vanderbilt Parkway) with the Manhattan skyline in the distance. Built in 1908, the parkway is celebrated as the first road in the United States designed exclusively for automobiles.

Stretching from Queens to Ronkonkoma, it featured innovative overpasses and bridges, making it a pioneer in modern roadway design.

Initially a private toll road costing $2 to use, it was largely frequented by wealthy car enthusiasts eager to race their vehicles.

The parkway was eventually closed in 1938 and absorbed by the state, though parts of it remain today, repurposed as a scenic bike path in Queens. A fascinating glimpse into the dawn of the automobile age.

Have you driven it…lately?

The Intellectual Summer Holiday,“ by William Heath Robinson, 1925. Published in The Bystander, June 10, 1925.

FDR & Cordell Hull

FDR’s secretary of state, Cordell Hull, was famously unforthcoming, concealing his plans and emotions with the skill of a poker player. 

When Hull was a legislator one of his friends bet that he could get a direct answer out of him. He stopped him in the capitol and asked him the time.

Hull took out his timepiece, looked at it, and said, “What does your watch say?”

Art. From trash. Amazing

You may have seen this video of twin women speaking in unison.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maF9HNRcWxo&t=1s

This synchronicity between twins is uncommon but not unique. In fact, Werner Herzog is filming a movie called, “ Bucking Fastard” right now that stars Rooney and Kate Mara as a pair of inseparable twin sisters based on the true story of Freda and Greta Chaplin.

Here’s how Herzog describes the Chaplin twins:

In 1981 they had a short run in the British tabloids, and were famous for a few weeks for being the ‘sex-crazed twins’ who were so infatuated with their neighbor, a lorry driver, that he took them to court and had a restraining order taken out against them.

Their story is unique. They are the only identical twins we know of who speak synchronously.

We know that twins sometimes develop their own secret language when they are all alone by which they can exclude the rest of the world, but Freda and Greta spoke the same words at the same time.

I have had the experience where they open the door, greet me, and ask me inside, all completely synchronous in word and gesture. I suppose this type of a conversation could be a ritual developed by practice.

But later on, they answered questions they can’t have been expecting absolutely in unison. Sometimes they spoke separately, then Freda, for the sake of argument, would speak the first half of a sentence, at which point Greta would chime in with a word or two in unison, and then bring the sentence to a conclusion herself. Or the other way around.

They wore exactly the same clothes, hairstyles, shoes. Their handbags and umbrellas were identical; they were as coordinated as a Rorschach test ready to be folded in two at any moment. When they walked, they didn’t walk in step like soldiers, left-right, left-right, but they had their inside feet together and kept time with their outside feet.



It was the same with their handbags, which they didn’t both carry in their left hands; they carried them in their outer hands and their umbrellas with their inside hands. You could have folded a picture of them, and the two halves would have matched.

Their gestures were synchronized, their physical awareness of each other continuous. Who was left and who was right in sitting or walking was for me the only way of telling which one was Greta and which was Freda at our early meetings.

You can see them speaking & interacting in this 1987 short documentary about the twins, A Pair of One.

Where else do you find this sort of interesting stuff?

She starred on one of the biggest shows on TV – for 15 years. Never saw it. Who is she? Tell us here and you may win a $25 Amazon gift card.

Pasta Alla Zazzona (mmmmmmm)

You are going to love this dish. Try it. Have friends over. I’m available weekdays and weekends.



• 4 large egg yolks
• 2 ounces grated Pecorino Romano or Parmesan cheese (about 1/2 cup), plus more for serving
• 1/2 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper, plus more for serving
• 2 teaspoon olive oil
• 4 ounces guanciale or pancetta, cut into 1/2-inch-wide by 3/4-inch-long pieces (about 3/4 cup)
• 1 medium yellow onion, finely chopped (about 1 1/2 cups)
• 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 12 ounces uncooked hot or sweet Italian sausage, casings removed if needed
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 1 (28-ounce) can puréed tomato or tomato passata
• 1 tablespoon Calabrian chili paste (optional)
• 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
• 1 pound dried rigatoni pasta
• Kosher salt

INSTRUCTIONS

1.    Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil over medium-high heat.

2.    The Sauce: Whisk 4 large egg yolks, 2 ounces grated Pecorino Romano cheese, and 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper together in a medium heatproof bowl.

3.    Heat 2 teaspoons olive oil in a large Dutch oven or high-sided skillet over medium-low heat until shimmering. Add 4 ounces chopped guanciale and spread into a single layer. Cook, stirring occasionally, until browned and crisp, 6 to 10 minutes. Transfer the guanciale to a small bowl.

4.    Transfer 1 tablespoon of the fat in the pan to the egg mixture and whisk to combine. Remove all but 1 tablespoon of the remaining fat from the pan (discard or reserve any remaining fat for another use).

5.    Return the pan to medium-high heat. Add 1 finely chopped medium yellow onion and 2 finely chopped garlic cloves. Cook, stirring frequently, until the onions are slightly softened but not browned, about 3 minutes. Add 12 ounces uncooked Italian sausage. Cook, breaking up the meat with a wooden spoon into bite-sized pieces, until browned and cooked through, 6 to 8 minutes.

6.    Add 2 tablespoons tomato paste and cook, stirring often, until lightly toasted and darkened in color, about 1 minute. Reduce the heat to medium-low. Add 1 (28-ounce) can puréed tomatoes, 1 tablespoon Calabrian chili paste if using, and 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes. Stir to combine, scraping up any browned bits from the bottom of the pan.

7.    Partially cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the sauce is slightly thickened, about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, add 1 pound dried rigatoni to the boiling water. Cook until the pasta is just al dente, 10 to 13 minutes. Reserve 1 cup of the pasta cooking water, drain pasta.

8.    When the sauce is ready, turn off the heat. Add the pasta and guanciale, and toss.

9.    While whisking constantly, slowly pour 1/4 cup of the pasta cooking water into the egg mixture. While stirring constantly, slowly pour the egg mixture into the pasta.

Thin the sauce out with more pasta water as needed. Taste and season with kosher salt as needed. Serve topped with more grated cheese and black pepper. MANGIA

To pass the time while waiting in the trenches of the Argonne, French infantryman Hippolyte Hodeau engraved the names of his daughters in chestnut leaves.

And men on the battleship U.S.S. North Carolina, during the second world war, adopted a cat named George. Here’s his fitness report.

Here’s a sample taken from a few sources, that might amuse you. At least that’s what we hoped.

In The New Yorker, Kathryn Schulz mulled preschool and pathogens: “As you know if you have a kid of your own, the collective noun for ‘toddler’ is ‘superspreader.’” She later added, “Like air travel and Coachella, young children are optimized for spreading disease.”

In The Wall Street Journal, Jason Gay weighed in on a football play for gaining yardage by having the quarterback’s teammates shove him forward from behind. “The tush push could be banned for aesthetic reasons,” he wrote, later adding: “It looks like rugby played in quicksand, or the remains of the C group trying to board a Southwest flight.”

In The Athletic, Tyler Kepner marked the odd and auspicious start of the New York Yankees’ season: “Austin Wells became the first catcher ever to hit a leadoff homer on opening day, which is sort of like being the first school bus to win the Daytona 500. There just aren’t many catchers who have the chance.”

In The Times, Kim Severson wondered why chefs herald spring’s imminent arrival with ramps versus a better alternative: “Ramps are garlic’s murky younger cousin, the one who spent some time in juvie. Green garlic is the bright, younger sister who spent a summer interning at an organic farm collective.”

Anna Salinas began dating a man almost a decade her junior: “Jacob said he worked ‘in music,’ which I took to mean he sometimes played the guitar.” When they went clubbing, she was above the average age and “the other women wore low-slung pants with tiny crop tops, oozing the kind of confidence you feel when you’re still on your parents’ health insurance.”

James Hamblin parodied — or maybe just mimicked? — the typical message and script of a television drug ad: “You will frolic on the beach at sunset psoriasis-free, with a golden retriever, smiling into the distance. You also may experience sudden loss of cardiac function, seizures of the arms or intermittent explosive ear discharge. Talk to your doctor.”

Bret Stephens gazed into the future: “I suspect historians will one day remember the Department of Government Efficiency the way we now remember lobotomies. It seemed, to some at the time, like a good idea.

And you’ve been asked to be a bridesmaid.

Oh, god.

It happens.

She asks you to be in the bridal party and you mistakenly can’t come up with an excuse fast enough and so you wear…..

Or worse. SEND US – a photo of your worst bridesmaid – or prom – or well, just the largest mistake in your closet - and we’ll pick 3 and those winners will get a gift card which will make the ownership of that dress, just a little less onerous.

Laughs... Lots of Laughs