Bedtime music, pt. 153; body-text fonts, pt. 13: Goudy Old Style

Samuel has been asking to listen to Michael Stearns on Spotify, in the basement, late at night.

He curls up in an armchair, wraps himself in a blanket, and goes to sleep.

It’s cute, but he is becoming a quite heavy sack of potatoes. I’d rather not make a habit of carrying him up the stairs to his bed.

Tonight, both children are extremely wild and violent.

Meanwhile, in Florida …

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

This is Goudy, one of the “diamond-dot” fonts (look at the semicolons, colons, periods, etc. – well, maybe you can’t tell from this screenshot).

It’s especially useful in tight spaces, e.g. in narrow columns or where there is little distance between successive lines of text. Harper’s Magazine, which has been set in Goudy for many years, has got the best-looking body text of the famous magazines, better-looking even than The New Yorker’s.

A free variant, available in the roman and italic styles – but not in boldface – is Sorts Mill Goudy.

Football in español and inglés

Yesterday, Karin & I got COVID-19 booster shots, and I got a flu shot. I feel ill. I slept poorly last night. Both of my shoulders are sore, and it hurts to lie in bed.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I turned on NBC to watch the Chiefs-Steelers game. The commercials’ sound and picture were unsynched, and when the game appeared the commentary was in Spanish. What was going on? Was this broadcast meant for Telemundo?

Not that I minded. I’ve listened to Spanish NFL commentary plenty of times. I’m always delighted by the subtle terminological differences: for example, the term for a false start is falsa salida.

I also enjoy the cultural differences, which are rather more conspicuous. The Chiefs fans were doing “The Chop,” and the commentators were (unironically) like, Qué lindo ambiente, what a lovely atmosphere.

Sometimes the TV would show Chris Collinsworth and Al Michaels of NBC speaking on mute while the Mexicans talked over them. I think the Mexican play-by-play guy might actually be better than Michaels.

The best commentators had just finished calling the 49ers-Cowboys game on CBS. Tony Romo knows what he’s talking about, and he says it promptly and without fussing; and because he’s so quick, he says a lot. It spills out of him good-naturedly. He wears his learning lightly, as the late John Madden did (besides, he sounds like my friend Andrew). And Jim Nantz, Romo’s play-by-play man, is appropriately artless, not as incisive as the late Pat Summerall but pleasingly self-effacing.

Nantz, before a fourth-quarter, third-down play: “Is this the play of the game, Tony?”

Romo: “Yeah. It is. But there will be, like, four more of them after this one.”

Turns out, he was right; his feel for the pace is dead-on. It’s as if he were still quarterbacking. His precision is a joy to listen to; no other commentator is nearly as good in this way.

Olympic gold

The boy constantly climbs the furniture. Things which once were safe upon high shelves are no longer safe.

The boy also climbs and climbs on his father, who, hours later, must resist the urge to shield himself from being trampled by (phantom) mountain goats.

The boy’s mother drags herself to work most days. When not at work, she is in bed, sick.

This is what has been going on in our household.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Ecuador won its second-ever Olympic gold medal – the first since 1996. The competition was a pretty badass one: the men’s cycling road race.

The winning cyclist, Richard Carapaz of Carchi Province, recently finished third in the Tour de France. His fellow Olympic medalists excelled in that contest, too.

The six-hour Olympic race climbed part of Mt. Fuji.

Here are an Associated Press/Sports Illustrated report …

an NBC highlight video …

and some analysis.