Mystery Solved!

One of my father's catch-phrases, when I was a kid, was "Smile, Luigi!", intended to jolly a moping child (e.g., me) out of the dumps. I never knew where it came from; by the time I got around to asking, his memory had faded enough that he couldn't tell me. Yesterday, it occurred to me to raise the question on the American Dialect Society mailing list, and they came through: the phrase probably comes from the old radio show "Life with Luigi", about an Italian immigrant in New York City. (I gather it was in the same vein as Leo Rosten's "H*y*m*a*n K*a*p*l*a*n" stories.) The phrase was used by Luigi's German-immigrant friend Schultz, voiced by Hans Conried.

So. One more mystery solved.

Timing

Andrew Cashner is likely to be the Padres' opening-day starter; he took enormous strides forward as a starting pitcher last year, and if he can stay healthy he will be a solid performer, possibly an All-Star, for years to come.

Cashner was born on September 11, 1986. In other words, his fifteenth birthday was the day the towers fell.

Time passes. In some ways, too fast; in others, not fast enough.

Miscellany

1. One of the best things about using a slow cooker is the way the cooking smells slowly pervade the house. (Savory Slow-Cooked Grains is on the menu for this week.)

2. It occurred to me to wonder just how many webcomics I follow. Some of them have LiveJournal feeds; the rest are sorted into folders in my Bookmark list - Comics M, Comics T, Comics W, etc., culminating in Comics U, for those whose schedule is not tied to the week. (Yes, that means that most comics appear in more than one folder. It's simpler for me, that way.) Anyway, I just pulled the data together and discovered that I currently follow no less than sixty-seven webcomics. The full list is under the cut.
( What I Read )

3. I just finished reading William Dampier's book on his voyage to New Holland and back. It's strangely engaging; not too much exciting happens, but his careful descriptions of what he saw in the places he touched land are interesting. (He's careful to distinguish what he actually saw from what people he met told him about; though he mentions the two-headed amphisbaena, for instance, he makes clear that he never saw one.) There are also a lot of drawings, of the lands he passed and of the animals and plants he mentions, but the display on the Kindle is too small. I may have to go through the copy on my home computer, just to look at the pictures.