"A panhandler outside Grand Central Terminal says he rakes in up to $200 an hour from kind-hearted New Yorkers."

It might be the dog and it might be the location (Grand Central):

“People are more generous because I have a dog, 100 percent. They throw me a dollar and say, ‘That’s for the dog,’ ’’ Andersen said...

Another beggar, working the northeast corner of West 35th Street and Seventh Avenue near Penn Station, said that just like everything else in the city, it’s all about location for vagrants. “There are other spots where people get hundred-dollar bills. I could go over to Fifth Avenue and make $150 before lunch.... But I don’t want to deal with the hassle,’’ he said. “There’s people that bully you to get out of the good spots.’’

By the way, the headline uses the word "bum"...



... which we were just talking about in connection with Halloween costumes. I'd said that circa 1960 the go-to costumes were "bum and gypsy." I used the word "bum" (and "gypsy") because those were the words back then, not that I hadn't moved on to more respectful terminology. I got some (comic) pushback in the comments: "Hey, hey, hey, I'm gonna need a trigger warning if you're gonna use words like bum and gypsy."

The Post is using the word "bum" to rile readers, but I think "bum" is the wrong would for a person who is engaged in remunerative labor. You may disapprove of his money-making scheme, but he's not a bum. He's a beggar. But if you think "beggar" is too mean, I would call him a Provider of Charity Opportunities.

Or is "bum" the best word? The verb "to bum" can mean to beg, as in "He looked so immaculately frightful/As he bummed a cigarette/Then he went off sniffing drainpipes/And reciting the alphabet...."

"An era of seaweed eating can start to seem inevitable—penance for the golden days of corn and cars and cows."

"Paul Greenberg, who has written extensively about the collapse of fish stocks, told Business Insider last year, 'If I could buy kelp futures, I would.' Given the exigencies of feeding the planet, it might be preferable to other available alternatives. 'It’s not worms and it’s not bugs, so that’s positive, right?' he said to me. 'I don’t think anyone is going to stick their finger down their throat and say, "Blech, kelp—I don’t want to eat it."' Cheryl Dahle, the founder of Future of Fish, says, 'We eat things now we never would have imagined eating twenty years ago. We eat dogfish. It’s called dogfish, for crying out loud! If we can develop a market for snakehead fish—an exotic, invasive aquarium species—out of the Chesapeake, we can create a market for kelp.'"

I was reading — listening to the podcast of — this New Yorker article — "A New Leaf/Seaweed could be a miracle food—if we can figure out how to make it taste good" — as I was walking into the kitchen this morning, reencountering my exotic, invasive husband Meade.

ME: "What do you know about kelp?"

MEADE: "Does any Bob Dylan song have the word 'kelp'?"

ME: "Does any Jerry Lewis movie have him named 'Kelp'?"

Meade says he doesn't follow Jerry Lewis, but I don't think you need to follow Jerry Lewis to know this one. "Professor Kelp?" I say, stalling for time, because I don't know the answer to the Bob Dylan question. I say that "kelp" is good if you need a rhyme for "help," and then, doing my search at bobdylan.com, I see I'm right. It's "Sara":

Now the beach is deserted except for some kelp
And a piece of an old ship that lies on the shore
You always responded when I needed your help
You gimme a map and a key to your door

Jerry played Professor Julius Kelp in more movies than just "The Nutty Professor." Here's a compilation:

"... Bob Dylan’s backlit corona of hair, the Chicago logo embossed in chocolate and Bruce Springsteen sharing a private joke with the saxophonist Clarence Clemons..."

The album covers of John Berg, who has died at the age of 83.

At Columbia, Mr. Berg’s job drew not only on his flair for packaging but also on his esteemed eye for selection. Assigned to create a cover for “Born to Run,” he found himself contemplating with distaste the sober posed photograph that Mr. Springsteen had chosen.

“Bruce showed me the picture he wanted, which I always describe as ‘John Updike,’ ” Mr. Berg recalled in The East Hampton Star interview. “He looked like an author, one of those back-cover-of-his-book pictures. I asked him to leave the stuff with me and I would go through the contacts.”

Sifting the images, by Eric Meola, Mr. Berg came upon one of Mr. Springsteen in a moment of candid intimacy, his face dissolving in mirth as he leaned on Mr. Clemons’s shoulder.

With that image, the album’s cover became one of the most totemic of all time....

On the evening the same-sex marriage opinion was announced, Justice Scalia "suddenly got up onstage and sang" the Bob Dylan song, “The Times They Are A-Changin."

According to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

He opted to start swimmin’ lest he sink like a stone and to keep his eyes wide, the chance wouldn't come again, for the loser once had come around to win....

"Having a prefabricated laugh at the expense of my own dear mother without provocation of cause is not my idea of gratitude for the interview..."

"... which took up 10 of more pages in your puerile smokescreen periodical masquerading as a songwriting litany! My mother is not a public figure to be satirized and ridiculed with silliness and malicious nonsense by some scurrilous little wretch with a hard-on for comedy!"

Wrote Bob Dylan in a letter — which he never sent — to Song Talk magazine.

IBM gets me to embed its ad for IBM Watson.

I'm happy and thoroughly enthusiastic about propagating this:



Most viral video I've ever encountered on the internet. I'm susceptible to the virality of Bob Dylan, who does a subtle, lovely acting job. And I'm enjoying the closeup photography of his wrinkly face.

And let me give Apple equal time, and not because I've always been an Apple and not an IBM person. The Dylan ad reminds me — because of the nicely photographed closeup face and the pleasing music — of an ad that played during last night's football game: