Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.
— Oscar Wilde.
This is the first post on my new blog. I’m just getting this new blog going, so stay tuned for more. Subscribe below to get notified when I post new updates.
PUZZLES & QUIZZES
puzzle (n.)
c. 1600, “state of being puzzled,” from puzzle (v.); meaning “perplexing question” is from 1650s; that of “a toy contrived to test one’s ingenuity” is from 1814.
Online Etymological Dictionary
LA TRIVIATA #31 1. Who or what is the only title character in a Walt Disney movie who does not speak? 2. You are living in England in the 1890’s and you spy someone wearing a “Piccadilly Window.” What is a “Piccadilly Window”? 3. If you use an estoque, what profession do you most likely belong to: A. Bullfighting B. Beer making C. Pole vaulting D. Cabinet making 4. This actress born Margarita Carmen Cansino on October 17, 1918 and was labeled “A Love Goddess” by motion picture publicists was called “my favorite dance partner” by Fred Astaire. By what screen name was Ms. Cansino known? 5. The 8th Century Saint –Saint Hubert –became the Patron Saint of what group of people? A. Soldiers B. Beggars C. Hunters D. Dancers 6. Popeye ate a lot of spinach. What was his friend Wimpy’s favorite food? 7. What are the holes in Swiss cheese called? 8. What well-known entertainer called his $75 violin “Old Love in Bloom”? 9. In 1945 what (according to Life Magazine) was the most heavily fortified place on the planet? 10. “Tell Mother….tell Mother….I died for my country” were the final words of what American assassin? 11. Walt Disney’s body has been cryogenically frozen.. True or False? 12. Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharti became the first book in Arabic to be awarded what international prize for fiction in 2019? 13. If you purchase acetylsalicyclic acid, what have you bought? 14. Eric Arthur Blair is better known by his pen name. What is it? 15. In January to February 2020, what was the average speed of a taxi cab in Mid Manhattan, NYC? A. 4.6 MPH B. 5.7 MPH C. 6.9 MPH D. 7.1 MPH 16. What United States President was nicknamed Dutch? 17. What is the name of the Memphis Estate located at 3764 Elvis Presley Blvd.? 18. If you add up the values of all the cards in a 52 card deck (Ace being 1,& King 13) what do the cards add up to? 19. Charles Dickens’ great novel A TALE OF TWO CITIES takes place in what two cities? 20. The innovative real estate developer James Rouse (1914-1996) who received the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor a U.S. civilian may receive, called whatCalifornia tourist destination “the greatest piece of urban design in the United States”? ANSWERS 1. Dumbo 2. A monocle 3. A) Bullfighting. The word occurs in a Hardy Boys’ mystery – The Clue of the Broken Blade : “A very valuable and unusual sword,” the man answered. “it was used long ago by a matador in bullfights. He must have been a great favorite, for this estoque—that’s the name of the matador’s sword – is unusually attractive.” 4. Rita Hayworth 5. Hunters 6. Hamburgers 7. Eyes 8. Jack Benny. During World War II, he auctioned it off to raise money for Victory Bonds . 9. Iowa Jima 10. John Wilkes Booth 11. False 12. The Man Booker Prize for Fiction. Celestial Bodies was also the first novel written by an Omani woman to be translated into English. 13. Aspirin. Bayer changed the name acetylsalicyclic acid for marketing purposes to aspirin in 1899. 14. George Orwell 15. D--7.1 MPH 16. Ronald Reagan. 17. Graceland 18. 364 (one shy of the number of days in a year). 19. London and Paris 20. Disneyland
h CROSSWORD PUZZLE CLUES 1, Spear carrier? 9 letters Clue by Mark Diehl 2 Capital of Latvia Clue by Daniel Walsh ANSWERS: !. PICKLEJAR 2. EURO
hg
A.
I have on hand 3 objects, exactly the same. Each object
Is exactly the same size, and yet it is possible to place
two of the objects inside the third. What objects am I
talking about?
B. You have 3 coins -say a nickel, a quarter, and a half-dollar-- and you toss them up in the air. What are the
odds of the three coins all landing heads up or all three
tails up?
C. How is possible to show that 7 is half of 12?
Answers at the end of the blog.
**
Some Cryptic Clues by Frank W. Lewis in The Nation
l. “Was its rubber worth a fortune, possibly (8)
2. Where a little green might be found,
and nothing unchanged (5)
3. But Ophelia never got herself there (7)
4. Like a circle of three blind mice (5)
5. Given new heart, and managed to get one acre dug (10)
6. Certain, as suds are (7)
7.A battering ram pushes a killer
inside (7)
8. Proving a detective should be half naval hero and half craftsman (5,5)
9. in the Tuileries, you might have a good case for sewers (4)
10. Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer
according to the titles (9,5)
ANSWERS
1. Aladdin’s Lamp
2. Oasis (Nothing, as is)
3. Nunnery (Hamlet tells her “Get thee to a nunnery”)
4. Round (a circle is round, & “Three Blind Mice” is sung as a round)
5. Encouraged (anagram of one acre dug)
6. Assured (anagram of as suds are)
7.Grampus (hidden in the sentence—
battering ram pushes)
8. Perry Mason (Oliver Hazard Perry)
9., Etui (letters in Tuileries)
1. a small ornamental case for holding needles, cosmetics, and other articles. "exquisite etui cases fitted with scissors, bodkin, and thimble" Thus, the word in
the clue refers to persons who sew.
10. Adventure Story (The correct titles are The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
ANSWERS TO 3 OBJECTS
A. Rubber bands and/or Shirts
B. The 3 coins may land in 8 combinations:
H H H T T T
H H T or T T H
H T H T H T
H T T T H H
So 2 chances out of 8 that all 3 coins'
will land all heads or tails, or 4 to 1 odds.
3. Twelve in Roman Numerals - XII
Slice it half VII = 7
**
Samuel Loyd (from WIKIPEDIA)
January 30, 1841
Philadelphia, United States
Died
April 11, 1911 (aged 70)
Known for
Chess, puzzles, mathematical games
Samuel Loyd (January 30, 1841 – April 10, 1911),[1] born in Philadelphia and raised in New York City, was an American chess player, chess composer, puzzle author, and recreational mathematician.
As a chess composer, he authored a number of chess problems, often with interesting themes. At his peak, Loyd was one of the best chess players in the US, and was ranked 15th in the world, according to chessmetrics.com.
He played in the strong Paris 1867 chess tournament (won by Ignatz von Kolisch) with little success, placing near the bottom of the field.
Following his death, his book Cyclopedia of 5000 Puzzles[2] was published (1914) by his son.[3] His son, named after his father, dropped the "Jr" from his name and started publishing reprints of his father's puzzles.[4] Loyd (senior) was inducted into the US Chess Hall of Fame in 1987.[5]
TELL ME A RIDDLE
I win some, I lose some.
The days? What do they know?
They get away from me,
But they never belonged to me
In the first place & by now
I have overstayed my welcome
& am besieged by riddles.
I am the chicken that crossed
The road, the man afraid
Of his own shadow. That said,
I place my deepest trust
In what I do not know,
A universe riddled by sweep
Of mystery, tilt of planets
Over ruin, amid vast nets
Of shining & darkness. Trust
The living world to lead us
To better versions of ourselves,
The snake with its tail
In its mouth. Tell me, tell
Me what has 6 arms, 6 legs, 3 eyes,
& sings? The Cyclops trio
Singing “I Don’t Know Why
I Love You Like I do.” That doubt too
Does not possess an answer. Cry
Me river over my life passing.
The days, pushing & pulling,
Know nothing, but when I shed
My skin, what shall I answer?
Better to have gone naked
Than clothed in false wool.
Mortality is the ultimate riddle.
& makes the Sphinx,
Destroying both foul & fair,
Blush with shame. Man?
Solve that riddle If you can.
Louis Phillips
375 Riverside Drive
Apt. 14C’
New York, NY, 10025
FLYING BY THE SEAT OF MY PANTS
Flying under the radar of grief,
I want no medals, deserve none.
On the television monitors,
James Cagney stars
In something or other,
Some comic relief, no farce,
He’s being cashiered
Out of the Royal Air Force,
For flying by the seat of his pants.
No romance.
Like a lost pilot, all my life
I have ignored the instruments
& have flown over a vast expanse
Of loveliness.
Stars are fixed, but nothing in my life
Can be counted upon
To remain. Planets revolve
Amid indifferent spheres, worlds rife
With mysteries entangled with fog
& rain, wind velocities,
Fragile mortalies & runways
Too undependable to land upon.
I flew by the seat of my pants.
I have no medals. I deserve none.
Louis Phillips
375 Riverside Drive
Apt. 14C
New York, NY, 10025
THE MOVIES AT 24FPS RECREATE OUR UNIVERSE
Not now, wanton!
The Spirit of Cinema roils elephantine waters.
Time, truant with light,
To make, in our own image, movies .
With gigantic hotsy-totsy stars,
Their nonillion satellites in lather,
No small universe this.
(FLICKS LICK LUX)
Cinema divides day from night,
Day For Night
& whatever fans look upon,
Is good.
Many a Paradise or Roxy
Run fire,
Smattering life-blood
Onto the pitch,
Screens,
Radiant with high-tide breathing.
Next plunge the plants,
With everything that creepeth.
A. I have on hand 3 objects, exactly the same. Each object Is exactly the same size, and yet it is possible to place two of the objects inside the third. What objects am I talking about? B. You have 3 coins -say a nickel, a quarter, and a half-dollar-- and you toss them up in the air. What are the odds of the three coins all landing heads up or all three tails up? C. How is possible to show that 7 is half of 12? Answers at the end of the blog. ** Some Cryptic Clues by Frank W. Lewis in The Nation l. “Was its rubber worth a fortune, possibly (8) 2. Where a little green might be found, and nothing unchanged (5) 3. But Ophelia never got herself there (7) 4. Like a circle of three blind mice (5) 5. Given new heart, and managed to get one acre dug (10) 6. Certain, as suds are (7) 7.A battering ram pushes a killer inside (7) 8. Proving a detective should be half naval hero and half craftsman (5,5) 9. in the Tuileries, you might have a good case for sewers (4) 10. Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer according to the titles (9,5) ANSWERS 1. Aladdin’s Lamp 2. Oasis (Nothing, as is) 3. Nunnery (Hamlet tells her “Get thee to a nunnery”) 4. Round (a circle is round, & “Three Blind Mice” is sung as a round) 5. Encouraged (anagram of one acre dug) 6. Assured (anagram of as suds are) 7.Grampus (hidden in the sentence— battering ram pushes) 8. Perry Mason (Oliver Hazard Perry) 9., Etui (letters in Tuileries) 1. a small ornamental case for holding needles, cosmetics, and other articles. "exquisite etui cases fitted with scissors, bodkin, and thimble" Thus, the word in the clue refers to persons who sew. 10. Adventure Story (The correct titles are The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer ANSWERS TO 3 OBJECTS A. Rubber bands and/or Shirts B. The 3 coins may land in 8 combinations: H H H T T T H H T or T T H H T H T H T H T T T H H So 2 chances out of 8 that all 3 coins' will land all heads or tails, or 4 to 1 odds. 3. Twelve in Roman Numerals - XII Slice it half VII = 7
BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE-#12
l. Avoid fried meats which angry up the blood.
2. If your stomach disputes you, lie down and pacify it with cool thoughts.
3. Keep your juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move.
4. Go very gently on the vices, such as carrying on in society – the social ramble ain’t restful.
5. Avoid running at all times.
6. Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.
SATCHEL PAIGE
MORE HELPFUL ADVICE FROM MANY SOURCES
OCCAM’S RAZOR
The principle of Occam’s razor suggests that
the simplest hypothesis is usually the correct one - -
or as the character Gil Grissom in “CSI: Crime
Scene Investigation” succinctly puts it, if you
hear hoofbeats “think horses, not zebras.”
Michiko Kakutani. New York Times (February 16,
2010)
**’
Don’t let your mouth write a check that
your ass can’t cash.
Anonymous
Don’t fatten frogs for snakes.
Anonymous
When you discover you are riding a dead horse,
the best strategy is to dismount.
Traditional wisdom of the Dakota Indians
Here is a rule I recommend. Never practice
two vices at once.
Tallulah Bankhead
What matters most is how well you walk
through the fire.
Charles Bukowski
If Your Plan Is for 1 Year, Plant Rice. If Your Plan
is for 10 Years, Plant Trees. If Your Plan Is for
100 Years, Educate Children
Confucius
It’s great there are so many demanding travelers
who raise their voices. It makes it easier for the
rest of us. Start out friendly and playful. The idea
is to convey “I like you and want you to enjoy
interaction.”
Chris Voss, a former F.B. I. negotiator, on how
to negotiate travel perks, in The New York Times
(February 2, 2020) Travel Section
Never give credence to ideas that occur to you
indoors, said Nietzsche, which I think I’ll take
as my New Year’s resolution.
Jeremy Clarke
The Spectator (l4 January 2006)
A Japanese friend of mind gave me a piece of advice,
which I should like to pass on to the general reader:
Never, he said, go for the most beautiful girl in the
brothel, avoid the best rooms – the ones on the first
and second floors; the beautiful girls are irritable
and greedy – they will certainly swindle you: always
go to the third floor, where the plain girls will be
much more pleased to see you, and consequently
give you a better time.
James Fenton. You Were Marvelous (Jonathan Cape, 1983)
…don’t accept a ride in a car with another hitchhiker.
Jules Feiffer. Backing Into Forward. (2010)
When authorities warn you of the sinfulness of sex,
there is an important lesson to be learned: Do not
have sex with the authorities.
Matt Groening
Satchel Paige
THE ANSWER IS: 345,465, 212 THE QUESTION IS: Where does Louis Phillips rank on Forbes’ list of the richest Americans? ** The doctor has told me that I have a disease known as“The Accountant’s Bookkeeping Disease.” That means my body has one set of cells that it shows to the doctor and a second set that is shown to the insurance companies. ** I am a very obedient human being. The other day I passed a shop that said “WATCH REPAIR.” So I did. ** CONTEMPLATING THE NONES Although some nuns Know about the nones, To me the nones Are one of the unknowns. No one I know Knows the nones. nones -- In the ancient Roman calendar the 7th day of March, May, July or October and on the 5th day of the other months. The American Heritage Dictionary (Fourth edition)
**
BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE#11A
Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck. The Dalai Lama Epigraph to A Wonderful Stroke of Luck by Ann Beattie (NY: Viking, 2019) ** WHY I AM NOT A WORLD FAMOUS POET When it comes to writing poetry, I am out of my element: Helium. **
TALES OF HORROR The tale of horror and the supernatural fulfills one more valuable human function. Besides showing us where the taboo lines of our society lie, they emphasize the light by marking out that spot where the darkness takes over. The best tales in the genre make one point over and over again – that the rational world both within us and without us is small, that our understanding is smaller yet, and that much of the universe in which we exist is, so far as we are able to tell, chaotic. So the horror story makes us appreciate our own well-lighted corner of that chaotic universe. Stephen King. :”Introduction” to Masters of Horror and the Supernatural : The Great Tales, compiled by Bill Pronzini, Barry N. Malzberg, & Martin H. Greenberg(New York: Bristol Park Books, 1981) ** ON THE MOVIES & THE BIBLE Stanley Donen, Reading in the Bible about Onan, Thought: “Thanks to Bobby Breen, I cannot bring that story to the screen. ** ON TELEVISION & MOVIE WESTERNS Wagon Train— It does not take Einstein’s brain To describe the plot: Settlers are attacked; Indians shot. ON ADAPTING BOOKS FOR THE MOVIES Lewis, Jerry— Acquiring film rights to I, The Jury, Announced: “I shall play Mike Hammer. Of course, I shall add a lot of physical humor!” ** **
SCHOLARLY NOTE TO LORD BYRON’S DON JUAN (pronounced Don Chewin) Don Juan, Whatja doin’? “Screwin’, screwin ‘ & screwin’.”
CRITIC TAKE WARNING Say what you will About the joys of art, Pleasure of rhyme, Devotion & sacrifice, Be profound as you dare, But, Critic, take warning: It does not mean very much When there is no one Breathing beside you At 2 0'clock in the morning. **
Add title
BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE #10
On READING
jjhON READING I like to read on the beach. Once I took a “Neuromancer” paperback to Bora Bora and it was so humid there that every time I turned a page it came unglued and fell away from the book. I was slowly leafleting the island with William Gibson, although I like to think you could read single pages and still get the gist. As the last page fell away from the spine I was holding what looked like a gluey fish skeleton. Laurie Anderson, in “By the Book” (The New York Times Book Review, February 2020) ** THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE ACCORDING TO THE DICK & JANE READER See S.P.Q.T. run. ** First time around, my eyes were opened to something important about who I was at the moment of reading; later, to who or what I was becoming. But then I lived long enough to feel a stranger to myself – no one more surprised than me that I turned out to be who I am.” Vivian Gornick, on reading Natalia Ginzburg. “Look Again” by Alexandra Schwartz (The New Yorker, February 10, 2020) ‘** In the nineteenth century, when its literature equaled that written at any place at any one time in history, Russia had no 'great' woman writer--no Sappho, no Ono, no Komachi or Murasaki Shikibu, no Madame de Stael or George Sand, no Jane Austen or George Eliot--or so we might say when surveying the best-known works of the age. But we now know this truth to be less than true. Karolina Pavlova, born Karolina Karlovna Jaenisch in Yaroslavi in 1807, died in Dresden in 1893, after having lived outside Russia for four decades.... Barbara Heldt. "Karolina Pavlova: The Woman Poet and the Double Life" -- Introduction to A Double Life by Karolina Pavlova, translated by Barbara Heldt (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019). ** ON MICHAEL CONNOLLY & THE HARDY BOYS In Number 3 of The Hardy Boys Series -- THE SECRET OF THE OLD MILL – as the story gets underway, there is a plug for the previous two adventures: "However, the Hardy boys had inherited much of their father’s ability and deductive talent. Already they had aided in solving two mysteries that had kept Bayport by the ears. As related, in “The Hardy Boys: The Tower Treasure,” they had solved the mystery of the theft of valuable jewels and bonds from Tower Mansion… In the second volume of the series, “The Hardy Boys: The House on the Cliff,” has been told how the Hardy Boys discovered the haunt of a gang of smugglers…" Now, if that isn’t an example of post-modernism in literature, I do not know what is. It is also smart marketing. Any reader starting the series at any point beyond the first volume would soon be hustled back to buy the books he missed. I have to admit that age 11,I had no idea what bonds were, but at least I knew they were valuable. GOING BEYOND THE BOUNDS OF FICTION IN MICHAEL CONNELLY’S THE CROSSING If the creators of THE HARDY BOYS SERIES were clever and postmodern in promoting books in their series, Michael Connelly goes them one better in crisscrossing the boundaries of fiction and reality. In Chapter 12 of Connelly’s Hieronymus Bosch novel The Crossing, Connelly’s other famous character The Lincoln Lawyer (Mickey Haller) steps outside the novel to become a living person who has had a film made about him: ‘Haller missed the entire session with Foster. He was either a celebrity lawyer or a notorious lawyer, depending on how you looked at it. He had received the ultimate imprimatur of L.A. acceptance – a movie about one of his cases starring no less than Matthew McConaughey.” The more I think about the above paragraph, the more confused I get about the blurred boundaries of fact (the movie) and fiction (the character who has a movie made about his adventures). Obviously a ton of fictional characters have been brought to life on the screen, but the movies never became part of those characters’ identity/biography in the books they appeared. ** ON WRITING I think it is the fault of all American books, including my own. They pant so after meaning. They are earnestly moral, didactic; they build them ever more stately mansions, and they exhort and plead and refine, and they are, insofar, books of error. A work of art should not rest on perception. “Here,” in other words, “is my vision, be meaning what it may.” Saul Bellow in a letter to Ruth Miller (July 27, 1955) ** I write for self-entertainment, and perhaps to afford the world after I have left it, some notion of what strange beings may pass through it without its knowledge. George Darley ** I am not a scientist and don’t deal in formulas, but as a writer I would, in the words of Henry James, take to myself “the faintest hints of life” and convert “the very pulses of the air into revelations.” E.L. Doctorow The Nation (July 14, 2008) I was recently asked what it takes to become a writer. Three things, I answered: first, one must cultivate incompetence at almost every other form of profitable work. This be accompanied, second, by a haughty contempt for all the forms of work that someone has established one cannot do. To these must be joined, third, the nuttiness to believe that other people can be made to care about your opinions and views and be charmed by the way you state them. Incompetence, contempt, lunacy--once you have these in place, you are set to go. JOSEPH EPSTEIN Commentary (April 2004) ** “Ernest Hemingway once said that an author must know the entire iceberg to write about only the tip. This has become a basic tenet among suspense novelists: Learn everything about an important topic but include just the fraction of details relevant to the story.” Lisa Gardner. “A Visit to the Body Farm” in The New York Times Book Review (July 28,2019) The consideration governing the presentation of popular information may be reduced to three fundamental laws: The Law of Irrelevant Details, which maintains that the writer can interest any reader in the commonplaces of everyday occurrences by adding even more commonplace details about them; Mencken’s Law of the Boobeosie by which the writer assumes that the reader knows virtually nothing; and the Law of Conservation of Space, by which the writer is compelled to pack a sentence like airline luggage, with no superfluous articles. Dr. Leo Hamalian. “The Case of the Missing Articles” in American Mercury (March. 1957). THE FUTURE OF WRITING & READING NOVELS "Laura Esquivel physically incorporates music in her novel The Law of Law,which includes a CD. Indicators on pages refer to specific tracks, signalizing the points to pause and listen. This not only better appreciate the arias recorded in the book but also engages the audience in a way that wouldn't be possible without music." Kevin Moises Suarez. "Author's Playlist" in World Literature Today (Winter 2020)
A FUNNY THING HAPPENED TO ME ON THE WAY TO THIS BLOG
I was twenty-eight when I got married. My mother had a sign:
last girl before freeway.
Joan Rivers
How wrong Emily Dickinson was. Hope is not 'a thing
with feathers.' The thing with feathers has turned out
to be my nephew. I must take him to a specialist in
Zurich.
Woody Allen
**
My boyfriend -- he said to me that he reads Playboy for the
articles. I said, "Yes, I know. I just go to department stores
for the escalators.
Rita Rudner
**
Yiddish-- a combination of German and Phlegm
Billy Crystal, accepting the Mark Twain Humor Award
**
Sponges grow in the ocean. That just kills me. I wonder
how much deeper the ocean would be if that didn't happen.
Steven Wright
***********************************
The reason I signed the Beatles to a recording contract was
that I found them
personally very funny." George Martin
ONE OF THE LONGEST & BIGGEST LAUGHS
TO A LINE IN A BROADWAY MUSICAL COMEDY
“But Jumbo was too big for its cash registers, Though it received
superb notices and played to over a million customers, it lost money.
A few years ago theWhitneys got some of it back when Metro
bought the movie rights. I don’t know when the studio is going
to get around to making this picture, but before it does, I would
suggest that it send the director to New York and instruct him to
stand still some night near the parking space at 43rd Street and
Sixth Avenue where the old Hippodrome stood. If he listens closely,
he’ll still hear them yocking it up at what drama critics agree was
the biggest laugh in the history of show business. It came near
the end of the first act when a sheriff caught Jimmy Durante trying
to steal an elephant.
“Where are ya going with that elephant?” yelled the copper.”
“What elephant?” asked Jimmy.
BILLY ROSE. Wine, Women and Words/ (Simon & Schuster,1948)
**
COMEDY/THE COMIC
Jewish comedy is almost inevitably concerned with things
gastronomical. The Jews enjoy talking about food more than
any other people. Through many centuries they lived in
enforced poverty. If they could not invent food out of thin air,
they could at least invent stories and jokes about it to take their
minds off their miseries.
Steve Allen. Funny Men (New York: Stein & Day, 1981).
God writes a lot of comedy... the trouble is, he's stuck with so
many bad actors who don't know how to play funny.
Garrison Keillor
Since the days of Pigmeat Markham, not to mention Lenny Bruce,
the comedian's job has been to say the unsayable -- to give voice
to the things that stink or bite us in the heart.
Hilton Als. "Bros' Night Out," in The New Yorker (February 10, 2020)
Comedians are by nature enemies of boundaries. They live easier
by the laws of joy which they create than by the laws of good
behavior which society sets down. Their job description is to
take liberties – something the public applauds in art but abhors
in life.
John Lahr
For myself I think it's (psychoanalysis ) is dangerous. Someone who has inner sad feelings about certain things-- instead of them 'burying him, can be put to better use.' If I were to find out that these sad things are truly not sad, I think people would no longer find me funny -- 'cause funny had better be sad somewhere.
Jerry Lewis, quoted in Who the Hell is in the Picture by Peter Bogdanovich
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004)
Funny isn’t about beauty –it’s about freedom.Sometimes that
freedom leads to disrespect, ridicule, and outright offensiveness.
Robert Mankoff. Cartoon editor for The New Yorker
Woody Allen believes that S.J. Perelman summed up the character
of great comics is one phrase "Baby, it's cold outside".
Quoted by Phil Berger in "The Business of Comedy"
(The New York Times Magazine, June 9, 1985)
The comedian’s slang for a successful show is “I murdered
them,” which I’m sure came about because you finally realize
that the audience is capable of murdering you.
Steve Martin. Born Standing Up.
“You may estimate your capacity for Comic perception
by being able to detect the ridicule of them you love, without l
oving them less: and more by being able to see yourself
somewhat ridiculousness in dear eyes, and accepting the
correction their image of you proposes.”
George Meredith. Essay on Comedy.
NOTES TO MONOLOGUES NEVER DELIVERED At 50th Street and 6th Avenue there is a billboard advertising THE INVISIBLE MAN...SEE IT ON IMAX. Does viewing someone who is invisible on a big screen make it easier not to see him? During the impeachment trial of President Trump, restaurants in Washington D.C. featured on their menus a brand new sea-food dish -- Squid pro quo. ** I grew up in a very tough neighborhood. I remember My very first alphabet book. A was for ankle bracelet. At home our phone had the bail bondsman on speed dial.On my block, if shop lifting were an Olympic event, my friends would take home all the medals—even if they did not win them. Not only was the neighborhood rough, it was terribly Racist. My mother brought home a package of Aunt Jamima mix and the Klan burnt a cross on our front lawn. NEW WESTERN IN TOWN: JEKYLL AND HYDE MEETS THE THREE FACES OF EVE This western is unique because the sheriff is also the villain, which means that shoot-out is between the sheriff and himself. Spectators are confused when they see only one person on main street as the sheriff is forced to draw against himself. LS. MAIN STREET OF DODGE. HIGH NOON. GUNSLINGER (TO THE SHERIFF ): This town ain’t big enough for the two of you, Jekyll and… JEKYLL: Hyde. GUNSLINGER: I ain’t going to hide from the likes of you… two… JEKYLL: Here comes Eve White. EVE ENTERS: EVE: High Handsome. Seen Hyde’s hide? JEKYLL: No, Eve… EVE: Eve black. GUNSLINGER SHOOTS. JEKYLL BITES THE DUST. AS HE DIES HE CHANGES INTO HYDE. EVE BLACK, DISTURBED BY WHAT SHE SEES, REVERTS TO EVE WHITE. THE GUNSLINGER REMOVES HER SKIN TO REVEAL AN ALIEN FROM ANOTHER PLANET. FADE OUT.
On a more serious note, my good friend Zoran Amar is raising money on kickstarter for his documentary feature — Invincible Mind. The trailer for the film can be seen below.
Any contribution to help with the completion of the film will be greatly appreciated.
BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE -#8
THE READING & WRITING ISSUE
SHOULD YOU BECOME A PUBLISHER?
On December 21, 1950 in a letter to Burroughs Mitchell of Scribner’s , Norman Mailer declared that the title to James Jones’ great war novel –From Here to Eternity –was an “awful title.” If you agree or disagree with Mailer’s assessment give yourself 150 points. If, however, you are asking: Who is James Jones? Who is Norman Mailer? What was Scribner’s? What war is being referred to? – then perhaps publishing is not the best choice for a profession for you. **
CAREER OPPORTUNITIES Why didn't I go Into demolition and carting? Unfortunately, my readers Believe I did. ** LIT CRIT #87986954 Some readers adore it, Some readers abhor it. I mean by it, Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit. **
2 CLASSIC SENTENCES FROM ANONYMOUS SOURCES
The following sentence (perhaps spoken by a young child to his or her mother who has brought a book to read) ends with 5 prepositions:
Why did you bring that book I did not want to be read to out of up for?
The following sentence contains the word had 10 times in succession:
Jane, where her classmate had had ‘had’ had ‘had had’; ‘had had ‘ had a better effect on Jane’s teacher.
CERTIFICATE OF AUTHENTICITY
Every word in this line is authentic.
******
Is it possible that you knew beforehand that this sentence would not contain your name?
How will you know that this sentence will ever end unless you read it all the way to its conclusion?
READING
If I ask myself what single piece of literature gave me the most pleasure in 1961, it was an article in the Scientific American called “Cleaning Shrimps. W.H. Auden. London Sunday Times (December 24, 1961)
“What was the best book you’ve ever received as a gift?” “The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel,” which was given to me on the 17th birthday. It opened a door in my mind, and behind that door I found the room where I wanted to spend the rest of my life.” Paul Auster from THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (Sunday, January 15, 2017)
I don’t know if I wanted to be a writer, which is why I liked Jo March, or Jo March was a writer so I wanted to be a writer too. But I did the thing you can only do with books as a child, where your own autobiography and the contents of a book merge. Greta Gerwig in TIME (December16, 2019)
In the decades since “Little Woman”was published, children’s novels with black girl heroines have also been published –- “Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry; “The Bluest Eye”; the works of Virginia Hamilton and Octavia Butler. But they do not possess the assumption of lingua franca that “Little Women” is given in cultural conversations. I do not know many who ask, for example, “Are you a Lauren?” in reference to “Parable of the Sower.” Kaitlin Greenidge. “The Bearable Whiteness of ‘Little Women” in The New York Times (January 19, 2020)
CRITICISM
Everybody’s a critic. Right before coming to trial, Adolf Eichmann Remarked to his jailer That Lolita was “Quite an unwholesome book.” Nabokov had offended Eichmann ’s high moral standards.
Louis Phillips “In 1981 two books, Hemingway’s Reading 1910 –
1940 and Hemingway’s Library gave scholars their first systematic view of Ernest Hemingway’s lifetime of reading. The two books, which overlapped at points, listed over nine-thousand titles which, at one time or another, passed through Hemingway’s hand.” Michael S. Reignoel. “A Supplement to Hemingway’s Reading 1810-1940” in Studies in American Fiction, volume 14 (Spring 1986)
hProbably the most seminal thing in my life was growing up and discovering the OZ books. I was about twelve or thirteen before I finally had to face the fact there was no way to get OZ. Ronald Johnson (poet) One reads in order to ask questions. Franz Kafka Quoted by Alberto Manguel. A History of Reading (Viking Penguin, 1996).
“The experience of reading it for the first time is hard to describe. It’s like driving all night deeper into Georgia and finding yourself in a well-lit room with fantastic and familiar shadows on the walls, with an illuminating liquor sliding down clean inside you, telling things about yourself.” Patricia Lockwood describing what it is like to have read Carson McCuller’s novel THE BALLAD OF THE SAD CAFÉ:
Reading is a form of pleasure. Pleasure seekers, of course, take their pleasures in different ways and with different styles. The reading of an obsessive person differs from that of a hysteric. They produce different texts. Using psychoanalysis, we can differentiate classes of readers: the fetishist, the obsessive, the paranoiac, the hysteric. Vincent B. Leitch DECONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM. Columbia University,l983. P.113.
The novel’s ability to seduce readers with its alternate, and invariably more attractive, versions of reality was much lamented in the 19th century. Thomas Jefferson blamed literature for encouraging “a bloated imagination, sickly Book Review (April 2, 2017)
A man lay dying, a vet recalled. He knew, or must have suspected, it was all over for him. From his trouser sidepocket he removed an ASE (American Services Editions) copy of Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. As his life ebbed away, he read the novel: the bullets and shells whizzing overhead, the dead, dying and soon to die all around him. ‘It was so strange, so strange.’ John Sutherland, describing a veteran’s report of observing a soldier dying on Omaha Beach on D-Day. Magic Moments (2008)
A friend of ours traveling tourist on the Flandre decided that he would like to make Stendhal’s “Le Rouge et le Noir” his shipboard reading. accordingly , he repaired to the tourist-class library, where he found Balzac, Diderot, Pascal, deMaupassant, and, any another eminent author, but no Stendhal. When our friend asked the librarian about this, he was informed, “Ah, monsieur, Stendhal is where he belongs –in first class. “Talk of the Town,” in The New Yorker (April 11, 1959).
**
ON LYTTON & SIR WALTER SCOTT
I believe it was admitted by Scott
That some of his novels were rot.
How different was he from Lytton
Who admired everything he had written.
E. C. Bentley
**
The initial C stood for Clerihew. Bentley's middle name became the name of
the 4 line light verse form that I am quite attracted to). In addition to Clerihews,
Bentley wrote mysteries, such as TRENT'S LAST CASE. Reading that mystery,
T. L. Baker observed:
...Bentley varies the 'verbs of saying': Thus avoiding monotony, but it also makes
the writing more crisp in character. Examples of the device are: ' hinted';
'urged';' persisted'; 'grumbled'; 'observed'; 'inquired'; 'resumed'; 'reasoned';
'suggested'; 'admitted'; 'chuckled'; 'amended'; 'interjected' 'ventured'; 'ended' --
each appropriate to the context.
T. L. Baker, "E.C. Bentley: Trent's Last Case" in Notes on Chosen English Texts
**
Interjecting myself into the conversation about Trent's Last Case, I grudgingly admitted that I had chuckled, grumbled, and observed, but I admitted I had not
reasoned. Some listeners hinted, others urged that my manners be amended.
**
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WORD PLAY
Thisprominent member of British Parliament and the
author of Reflections on the Revolution in France (l790) , once said,
"Strip majesty of its exteriors (the first and last letters) and it
becomes a jest." Who was he?
Answer:
EDMUND BURKE
CROSSWORD PUZZLES (CLUES)
1. “Hearts that don’t beat very much?(5 letters)
by Timothy Polin
2. “Home squatters? (4 letters)
by Ross Trudeau
3. Group that’s on the take? (6,4)
by Jaeh Pahk
4. Most things on it might be taken as a
Matter of course. (4 letters)
by Frank W. Lewis
5. hairstyle for a gunslinger?
by Andrew Zhou
6. Helps for short people, for short
by Ori Brien
7. What a historical librarian might do? March this way, perhaps. (4,4)
. by Frank W. Lewis
ANSWERS TO CROSSWORD PUZZLE CLUES
- FILE PAST
2. UMPS
3. CAMERA CREW
4. MENU
5. BANGS
6. ATMS
7. FILE PAST
**
OF COOKBOOKS & THE MOVIES The other day I was standing in the gift shop for the American Museum of Folk Art, or some such place, and my attention was immediately drawn to two new cookbooks on the market: THE GONE WITH THE WIND COOKBOOK and THE CASABLANCA COOKBOOK. Unfortunately, I was with a friend who was famished for lunch, and so I had to abandon the store before I had the opportunity to scan the recipes therein. I can only imagine titles such as Tomorrow is Another Salad or Play It Again, Spam (and, yes, I know the line "Play it again, Sam" is not in Casablanca, but legend is always better than reality). What's next I wondered -- THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS COOKBOOK? No, that was, even for my bizarre sense of humor, too shocking to consider. Still, all through lunch with my friend, I could not help but think that the fad of creating cookbooks to go with famous movies has not yet been fully explored. In the near future, the following cookbooks are certain to go on sale: l. THE ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE COOKBOOK -- this book is certain to appeal to those persons who like to explore the ethical implications of cooking and serving foods. The dishes appear good on the outside, but are actually not wholesome on the inside. For example, "Lobster a la Mode" -- At first glance, the sight of moldy apple pie garnished with juicy flakes of lobster might appear to be appetizing, but further thought will probably warn us away in favor of something more traditional. 2. THE MACHINE GUN KELLY COOKBOOK -- This book features foodstuffs shot full of holes. Don't overlook "Up Against the Wall Swiss Cheese Fondu" -- a particular favorite on Valentine's day. 3. THE WAR OF THE WORLDS COOKBOOK -- or surprising things you can create with bacteria. 4. KRAMER VS. KRAMER COOKBOOK -- He cooks a dish one way; she cooks it another. Lawyers are called in to decide which of the two recipes will be served. Fun for the entire family. 5. THE GODFATHER COOKBOOK -- imagine the thrill your houseguests will feel when they wake up each morning with a baked horse delicately served in their bed. 6. THE HOME ALONE COOKBOOK SERIES -- recipes even a twelve year old can whip up. Amazing surprises for the unwary adult eater. 7. THE E.T. COOKBOOK -- In this cookbook, you have to call home to get the ingredients and the directions. 8. THE JURASSIC PARK COOKBOOK -- Bring dead foods back to life. 9. THE TOWERING INFERNO COOKBOOK -- Unfortunately, to properly cook anything in this book you have to set entire high-rises on fire. Hence, most of the recipes are too expensive for middle-class families. l0. THE JOHN WAYNE COOKBOOK -- Everything you ever wanted to know about cooking true grits... 11. THE LTTLE WOMAN COOKBOOK—actually a reprint of Lilliput’s favorite collection of Civil War recipes. It recommends the same recipes for larger women, merely serve smaller portions. Anyway, now that you've gotten the idea, perhaps you can come up with some ideas of your own. I am, as they say, open to suggestions. Maybe, with a burst of imagination, we can revolutionize the cookbook publishing industry overnight.
PHILLIPS’ MISCELLANY #7
‘ On language, words, word play etc. THE APPLE-SAUCE CHRONICLES
LANGUAGE
“It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression “as pretty as an airport”.
Douglas Adams
Language, according to the anthropologist Robin Dunbar, evolved because gossip is a more efficient version of the “social grooming” essential to animals living in groups.
John Tierney. The New York Times (Science Times) October 16, 2007
NAMES
Horseshoe crabs have lots of eyes, and the species name, Limulus polyphemus, derives from some of them. The two large eyes can be construed as squinting, hence Limulus ,which means “squinting or aslant” in Latin. A pair of smaller eyes on top of the prosoma are so close together they might be mistaken for a single eye, hence polyphemus, from the Cyclops.
Ian Frazer. “Blue Bloods” in THE NEW YORKER (April 14, 2014)
**
ENGLISH
ENGLISH
The word non-hyphenated is hyphenated.
Anonymous
He said it was a pity I had spoken English all my life, because it was so bad for the teeth.
Line from “The Captive Niece” by Mavis Gallant
**
In standard English there are only two present tenses – I work, I am working. In English as spoken in white Appalachia, there are three – I work, I am working, I a’working. In black Appalachian dialect there five – I work, I am working, I be working, I a’working – and each has a different shade of meaning.
Toni Morrison
Time (April 6, 1970)
THE WORD MUSEUM
In 2000, Jeffrey Kacirk’s book – THE WORD MUSEUM: THE MOST REMARKABLE ENGLISH EVER FORGOTTEN – was published by Simon & Schuster. Some forgotten words collected by Mr. Kacirk are:
l. album nigrum –the excrement of mice & rats
2. awblaster – a cross-bowman
3. bubulcitate – to cry as a cowherd
4. carry-castle — an elephant
5. cephalemonacy – divination by using a broiled
head of an ass
6. feague – to put fingers up a horse’s fundament
7. maffle – to stutter
****
THE APPLESAUCE CHRONICLES
Rin TinTinnitus – Movie dog whose barking leaves fans with ringing in their ears for hours after the movie is over.
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HAYDEN – A noted Doctor has a second personality who composes symphonies.
“I had my nose removed,” Pinocchio said with a straight face. ** If a building has occupants, can it also have occushirts? ** THE NEW GEOGRAPHY: Pinnocc-Ohio – The state that grows larger whenever one of its citizens tells a lie. ** Knock, knock. Who’s there? Distance. Distance who? Distance is a waltz, but the next dance is a tango. * What’s the difference between a doorman and a fashion designer? One closes doors while the other adores clothes. ** SENTENCES THAT FEATURE AT LEAST 5 CONSECUTIVE LETTERS OF THE ALPHABET: l. ABC DEFtly spoken by a young child is pleasant to hear. 2. Do you fly KLM? NO. 3. Run to heR , STU, Very quickly.
DIFFICULT TO SAY ALOUD QUICKLY Watch Watch Swatch. Which Watch Swatch? Switch Watch Swatch. **** A LETTER TO THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW April 11, 2014 I totally like John McWhorter’s like of like. Like wow! The Grammar Police can whistle in the wind because the English Language is stronger than all of us. It goes its own way. Speaking of its, what’s with the its and it’s problem. Many of my college students confuse it’s for the possessive. But, think about it –it’s for a possessive is logical, since all possessive cases use the apostrophe S. If you wish to know when it’s denotes it is, placement in the sentence will make it clear. Perhaps the confusion between its and it’s will eventually disappear. Like totally. ********** THE PHLOX OF THURBER America's noted humorist James Thurber once noted, "On a recent night, tossing and spelling, I spent two hours hunting for another word besides 'phlox' that has 'hlo' in it. I finally found seven." Can you? *** Possible answers: l. Decathlon 2. Pentathlon 3.Hydrochloric 4. Chloroform 5. Monthlong 6. Matchlock 7. Chlorine 8. Chlorophyll ******* FROM MY GOOD FRIEND RICHARD GID POWERS: NOTES ON THE TERM FIFTH BUSINESS Fifth business? Here is the definition that Davies offers in a preface: "Those roles which, being neither those of Hero nor Heroine, Confidante nor Villain, but which were nonetheless essential to bring about the Recognition or the denouement, were called the Fifth Business in drama and opera companies organized according to the old style; the player who acted these parts was often referred to as Fifth Business." Fifth Business in this case is Dunstable Ramsay, a crumpled old history professor with a wooden leg and an interest in mythology, magic and hagiography, who has just retired after 45 years of teaching in a private Canadian boys' school. A report of his retirement ceremony in the school's newspaper has "disgusted" him, not merely because of "its illiteracy of tone" but also because of "its presentation to the public of a portrait of myself as a typical old schoolmaster doddering into retirement with tears in his eyes and a drop hanging from his nose." To set the record straight and illustrate what "the vital though never glorious role of Fifth Business" can involve, Ramsay addresses a lengthy and indignant autobiographical letter to the school's headmaster. Mr. Davies's novel is the letter. ** FIFTH BUSINESS l Here is the definition that Davies offers in a preface: "Those roles which, being neither those of Hero nor Heroine, Confidante nor Villain, but which were nonetheless essential to bring about the Recognition or the denouement, were called the Fifth Business in drama and opera companies organized according to the old style; the player who acted these parts was often referred to as Fifth Business." Fifth Business in this case is Dunstable Ramsay, a crumpled old history professor with a wooden leg and an interest in mythology, magic and hagiography, who has just retired after 45 years of teaching in a private Canadian boys' school. A report of his retirement ceremony in the school's newspaper has "disgusted" him, not merely because of "its illiteracy of tone" but also because of "its presentation to the public of a portrait of myself as a typical old schoolmaster doddering into retirement with tears in his eyes and a drop hanging from his nose." To set the record straight and illustrate what "the vital though never glorious role of Fifth Business" can involve, Ramsay addresses a lengthy and indignant autobiographical letter to the school's headmaster. Mr. Davies's novel is the letter. The story it tells revolves around a misaimed snowball thrown late one afternoon in 1908 in the tiny Canadian village of Deptford. As it turns out, the lives of all five of the people involved in the incident are forever defined at the moment it happens. It is not immediately apparent that they are. Percy Boyd Staunton, who throws the snowball, will grow up to marry the town's beauty and become one of the richest, most powerful men in Canada. Mary Dempster, whom the snowball strikes in the back of the head, will become a simpleton, the town's "hoor," and possibly a saint, too. Her husband, the Reverend Amasa Dempster, will live on for a time. Paul Dempster, whose premature birth is brought on by the impact of the snowball, will grow up to be the world's greatest magician. But certain paths will cross again and the incident will be resolved.
BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE #6
MOVIES
Like most film-makers I have spent more time on movies I have not made than on ones that I have.
John Boorman
**
I told Dale: "When I go, just skin me and put me on top of Trigger." And Dale said, "Now don't get any ideas about me." Roy Rogers Epigraph to Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins (New York: Bantam Books. 1976) **
CARRY ON CLEO carries the following credit: Based upon an idea by William Shakespeare. (Carry On Cleo is a 1964 British comedy film, the tenth in the series of 31 Carry On films (1958–1992). The website ICONS.a portrait of England describes Carry On Cleo as “perhaps the best” of the series.[3] Regulars Sid James, Kenneth Williams, Kenneth Connor, Charles Hawtrey, and Jim Dale are present and Connor made his last appearance until his return in Carry On Up the Jungle six years later. –Wikipedia)
DRAGON SEED (1944)…the Chinese simple-folk characters are played by Katherine Hepburn, Turhan Bey,Walter Huston, Agnes Morehead, Hurd Hatsfield, Akim Tamiroff, Aline MacMahon, and Henry Travers. The New Yorker. “Goings On About Town: Movies”
(September10, 1973)
Love Story. yes, I saw it on tv. I never laughed so much in my life, what a ridiculous hunk of pretentious phoney shit but looking at it as pure comedy it was magnificent, if you know what I mean. I guess each scene before it arrived. You know the world is really a long long way from solving ANYTHING when they gulp in this kind of tripe and admire it… Charles Bukowski in a letter to Carl Weissner (March 23, 1973). SELECTED LETTERS, Volume 3 (l971-1986) London: Virgin Books Ltd. 2004.
It’s always been my formula to get the next picture set up before anyone’s seen the last one. Alan Rudolph, Director of “Breakfast of Champions” **
The notion of these two characters falling rapturously, romantically in love is virtually revolting.’ Bosley Crowther, reviewing The Iron Petticoat, starring Bob Hope and Katherine Hepburn.
BEWARE OF GREEKS BEARINGBUZZ CUTS Headline for Manohla Dargis’s review of Clash of the Titans NY Times (April 2, 2010) **
Here’s one of the few rules in movies which matter: an actor won’t last as a leading man unless he plays characters who want something passionately. Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster want power, and Buster Keaton and Clark Gable want girls. Gary Cooper and James Stewart seek justice…. David Denby The New Yorker (January 29,2007) **
Beloved Infidel, as a film, left me cold as ice; I couldn’t relate to it. Gregory Peck was completely wrong and Deborah Kerr playing me, was too finished a product, too sure of herself…and much too thin! You could see her bones in a swimming suit. No one has ever seen my bones. That film was made in 1959, and the person I would have chosen to play Sheilah Graham was Marilyn Monroe. I begged them to give her the part, but Jerry Wald said no. Sheilah Graham in Playboy (May 1976)
There are movies based on comic books, movies based on toys, and even movies based on amusement park rides, burt nothing wears a bigger “hate me” sign on its back than a movie based on a novel written by a celebrity, Grady Hendrix Reviewing Ethan Hawke’s “The Hottest State” in NY Sun (Auigust 24-26, 2007).
Scientists agree that half of our world is made up of elementary particles known as fermions and the other half is made up of advertising for “Happy Feet.” Grady Hendrix
Whenever I find myself getting overwrought over problems with one of my films, I would say to myself. “It’s only a movie.” It never worked. I was never able to convince myself. Alfred Hitchcock **
“The most beautiful thing about ‘Donnie Brasco’ is the opening credit sequences. That seems to be the fashion these days. Think of ‘Mars Attack!’ or the violated violin sounds at the beginning of ‘Seven’ or, best of all, the thumping credits of ‘Mission Impossible,’ which were so tense and sexy that you could leave the theatre immediately afterward without having to suffer the letdown of the film itself.”Anthony Lane. The New Yorker (March l7, 1997)
…a gratifying law of movie economics: the greater the frenzy with which money is thrown at special effects, the less likely they are to linger in the heads of customers. Anthony Lane. The New Yorker (September 2, 2019) **
Curiously, the word “Jew” is never mentioned in the DeMille film, nor are the words “Hebrew” or “Israelite.” Samson’s people are referred to only as “Danites” in what may have been nervousness about anti-Semitism during the McCarthy era. Philip Lopate. “Samson and Delilah and the Kids.”
Shots of him (Fred Clark playing Marblehead) are always introduced with what may be called a visual rhyme – a buoy, oscillating as his head oscillates (and when his head has an ice-bag on it, the buoy has a seagull). Richard Mallett, reviewing Don’t Go Near the Water, Punch (February 26, 1958)
Not long after the first World War, the movie baron Samuel Goldwyn set up a stable of eminent authors in an attempt to give silent screenplays more literary weight. One of the recruits was the Nobel-Prize winning Belgian writer Maurice Maeterlinck. Initially neither party seems to have been troubled that Maeterlinck spoke no English; and the great Belgian set to work on a screen version of his novel La vie des abeilles. When the script was translated Goldwyn read it with increasing consternation until he could no longer deny the evidence of his senses. “My God!” he cried. “The hero is a bee!” James Meek in The London Review of Books (4 November 2004)
A movie imprisons your eyes. It acts on you, not you on it. Hence, you don’t “see” or “look at” a movie. You watch it the way a cat watches a bird, until the cat strikes, kills, eats. Leonard Michaels
The Exorcist was a landmark movie, both scary and disturbing. It was also the first and last time a Catholic priest actually wanted to give a woman control over her own body. Dennis Miller CLEOPATRA – Forty million dollars worth of Mediterranean splendor and cheap at the price. The leading roles are played by actors who are probably better known than the originals were. THE NEW YORKER . “Goings on About Town.” July 6, 1963. **
The first time I saw Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo was in 1958, its first run. I was in prep school. And it so moved, disturbed and overwhelmed me by the impact of its images that it altered my perception of life, of art and of myself. The twenty-six times I have seen film since have deepened those reactions. Donald Spoto
Wait until you see me in The Bible for John Huston. I’ve only seen thirty-five minutes of it, but it’s something else, something extraordinary. A symphony. It must be extraordinary because I play God three times. I’m a pre-echo of the trinity. Peter O’Toole Quoted by Ray Newquist in Showcase (William Morrow& Co.)
Cinema is the mythology of the twentieth century. Michael Powell
Almost honouring Jean-Luc Godard, (Gilberto) Perez’s discourse has a beginning, a muddle, and an end. Frederic Raphael. The Benefits of Doubt.
One always more or less believes to have ‘dreamed’ it when one recalls Claudette Colbert bathing in a pool filled with asses’ milk at the beginning of DeMille’s ‘Sign of the Cross.” Salvador Dali
In the world of 2001, people have become so machinelike that the most human character turns out to be a machine –that’s the essence of Kubrick’s dark prophecy: as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it s our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence. Nicholas Carr
**
Whenever I found myself getting overwrought over problems with one of my films, I would say to myself, “Remember, it’s only a movie.” It never worked. I wasnever able to convince myself.
Alfred Hitchcock . Quoted in Charlotte Chandler’s It’s Only a Movie (Simon and Schuster, 2005)
**
On NORTH BY NORTHWEST
The opening music, a fandango, anticipates the crazy dance Cary Grant is about to do across America. The final chase across Mount Rushmore was choreographed in the editing room to this fandango.”
Bernard Herrmann
Quoted in Charlotte Chandler’s It’s Only a Movie (Simon and Schuster, 2005)The Atlantic (July/August 2008)
“The commercial cinema is an entertainment or pastime for illiterate slves of an up-to-date ‘business civilization’ founded on mammon. The sham naturalism, the trendy romanticism, the sentimentality on the one hand with its psychological complement — brutality– on the other. The tinned literature and language and music of the cinema have had their big share in the disbasement of the idealistic significance if theatrical performance and workmanship.” Theodore Komisarjewsky
Desperate weeks produce disastrous results. Summer’s guarantee top send I/Q’s plummeting is in full swing. So this week at their movies, the choices were robots running amok; Will Ferrell battling dinosaurs in an alternate universe called the Hollywood back lot; various wolverines, terminators and ossified Star Trek Xeroxes; and another night trapped in yet another museum with Ben Stiller. I’d rather take my chances exposed to swine flu. Rex Reed
“If vacuity had any weight, you could kill an ox by dropping on it Michaelangelo Antonioni’s latest film, The Passenger.” John Simon There’s a scene in John Maybury’s new film Love is the Devil in which Francis Bacon has an orgasm while watching Battleship Potemkin. Now that’s what I call a motion picture. Mark Steyn **
I don’t mean to suggest that film is the source and model of all that is wrong in modern society. But I do think that the world of film, which includes those people who are madly enthusiastic about any film, need to examine very carefully what happens in our minds when we watch endless violent imagery and feel no wound or repercussions. For one, I am no longer confident that a message has not been passed down to several generations, in their bloodstreams, in their nervous systems and in their trigger fingers. David Thomson See THE INDEPENDENT (October 10,2003), p.4. **
From Russia With Love. Ian Fleming is the late late show of literature. Perused at the witching hour. The violent adventures and immoderate amours of James Bond, Agent 007 of the British Secret Service, seems as normal as Ovaltine – and rather more narcotic,” TIME Magazine ( April 10, 1964)
Whatever happened to the good, honest practice of sticking numerals after a sequel’s title to indicate what number it was in the series? I grew up in the days of Jaws 2, Superman III and Police Academy 7 and, whatever the shortcomings of those pictures, at least you knew where you stood. Generally speaking, the higher the number, the worse the film in question was likely to be.
Toby Young The Spectator, l8 August 200
LUMINOUS DECEITS —Verse about movies
ON THE MOVIES & THE BIBLE
Stanley Donen,
Reading in the Bible about Onan,
Thought: “Thanks to Bobby Breen,
I cannot bring that story to the screen.
**
ON TELEVISION & MOVIE WESTERNS
Wagon Train—
It does not take Einstein’s brain
To describe the plot:
Settlers are attacked; Indians shot.
EDDIE FISHER
Fisher, Eddie—
For awhile he was a steady
Husband to a movie star named Liz.
She left him for Richard Burton. That’s show biz.
**
Movie -OLA–OOH LA LA LA
MOVIE-OLA—OOH LA LA
Selections from 505 Movie Questions Your Friend Can’t Answer by Louis Phillips (New York: Walker and Company, 1983)
1, In France the title of this Cary Grant film was advertised as Grand Mechant Loup Appelle (“Big Bad Wolf is Calling”). By what title is the film better known in the United States?
2. “You have the touch of a sex-starved cobra is a line from what 1942 classic film comedy starring Bette Davis and Monty Wooley?
3. Joseph Keaton, Jr.was Buster Keaton’s birth name. What American magician gave him the name Buster & why?
4. In 1938, what New York Yankee baseball star was offered the chance to play Tarzan in the movies?
5. Who was originally offered the role of Lawrence in David Lean’s epic film Lawrence of Arabia (1962)?
6. After a screen test, a talent scout filed the following report about an actor: “Can’t act. Can’t sing. Slightly bald. Can dance a little.” What dancer/singer and future film star did not measure up to the wrong-headed scout’s expectations?
ANSWERS:
1. The film is Father Goose (1964) . How a film can go from goose to wolf in translation remains a mystery. The song “Pass Me By:” with music by Cy Coleman and lyrics by Caroline Leigh is sung this film.
2. The line is delivered in The Man Who Came to Dinner. The film is based on the 1939 play The Man Who Came to Dinner by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman. The play’s main character Sheridan Whiteside was based upon author, critic, and radio performer Alexander Woollcott.
3. As a child, Keaton fell down the steps of a medicine show wagon while his parents were performing. Fellow performer Harry Houdini saw him take the fall and said , “That was some buster you took.” The name stuck, and it was Buster Keaton from then on.
4. Lou Gehrig. He turned the part down. Instead he decided to star in the 1939 western Rawhide. He did not become a movie star.
5. Albert Finny. He turned down the part because it would gave required him to sign a five-year Hollywood contract.
6. Fred Astaire. No further comment necessary.
BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE #5
SOMETHING FUN TO DO ON A RAINY DAY IN YOUR OWN HOME
SHOOT YOURSELF OUT OF A CANNON FROM YOUR LIVING ROOM INTO
YOUR KITCHEN FOR A MIDNIGHT SNACK. IF IT TAKES ALL DAY FOR YOU
TO ACCOMPLISH THIS FEAT, THEN YOU ARE DEFINITELY NOT USING ENOUGH GUNPOWDER.
****
TIME MAGAZINE IS NOT ALWAYS RIGHT
On September 24, 1956 TIME MAGAZINE described MAD MAGAZINE as "...a short-lived satirical Pulp..."
Short-lived? More than 23 years later MAD is still delivering satirical pulp.
"What, me worry?" -- Alfred E. Neuman
There was a time when parody was a popular literary and visual art (on television in the 1950's Sid Caesar treated his viewers to take-offs on operas and movies (foreign & domestic), but today parody has a difficult row to hoe because fewer and fewer readers or audience members are familiar with the works referred to. (The wonderful and intelligent followers of this blog ,of course, have no problem enjoying parodies). Throughout its existence MAD published some wonderful parodies of popular movies and TV shows. I highly recommend MAD's 300th issue (January 1991) with very funny spoofs of GONE WITH THE WIND, DICK TRACY, THE WIZARD OF OZ, and CASABLANCA.
The Wizard of Oz parody by artist Sam Viviano and writer Frank Jacobs includes song lyrics and (Believe It or Not) Donald Trump as the fabulous Wizard of Odds who threatens to change the Tin Man's body to plastic. When the Tin Man protests that plastic is bad for the environment, The Wizard of Odds replies:
Whose environment? Not mine, kiddo!
Every sucker in this place carries plastic,
which makes for easy credit, which makes
for lots more money coming to me!
One last note. GROAN WITH THE WIND (Artist: Jack Davis, Writer: Stan Hart)
contains this delicious exchange between two slaves on Harlott's plantation Tariff:
Slave #1: What do they call it when black folks work
for no pay while white folks get rich from
their labors?
Mammy: In 1860, they call it "Slavery" In 1990, they'll
call it "College Basketball" !
30 SECONDS A DAY TO A MORE POWERFUL VOCABULARY Umbilici Is not a word for the imbicili. **
NOTES ON THE ART OF COMEDY
Jewish comedy is almost inevitably concerned with things gastronomical. The Jews enjoy talking about food more than any other people. Through many centuries they lived in enforced poverty. If they could not invent food out of thin air, they could at least invent stories and jokes about it to take their minds off their miseries.
Steve Allen. Funny Men (New York: Stein & Day, 1981.
“I listened to the audience , and then told me where the joke was.”
Bert Lahr
Comedians are by nature enemies of boundaries. They live easier by the laws of joy which they create than by the laws of good behavior which society sets down. Their job description is to take liberties – something the public applauds in art but abhors in life.
John Lahr
Funny isn’t about beauty –it’s about freedom. Sometimes that freedom leads to disrespect, ridicule, and outright offensiveness.
Robert Mankoff. Cartoon editor for The New Yorker
New Yorker
The comedian’s slang for a successful show is “I murdered them,” which I’m sure came about because you finally realize that the audience is capable of murdering you.
Steve Martin. Born Standing Up.
“You may estimate your capacity for Comic perception by being able to detect the ridicule of them you love, without loving them less: and more by being able to see yourself somewhat ridiculousness in dear eyes, and accepting the correction their image of you proposes.”
George Meredith. Essay on Comedy.
EPIGRAPHS
THE QUESTION OF QUESTIONS FOR MANKIND – THE PROBLEM WHICH UNDERLIES ALL OTHERS, AND IS MORE DEEPLY INTERESTING THAN ANY OTHER – IS THE ACERTAINTMENT OF THE PLACE WHICH MAN OCCUPIES IN NATURE AND OF HIS RELATIONS TO THE UNIVERSE OF THINGS.
H. Thomas Henry Huxley, Man’s Place in Nature
SO THE FIRST BIOLOGICAL LESSON OF HISTORY IS THAT LIFE IS COMPETITION. COMPETITION IS NOT ONLY THE LIFE OF TRADE, IT IS THE TRADE OF LIFE—PEACEFUL WHEN FOOD ABOUNDS, VIOLENT WHEN THE MOUTHS OUTRUN THE FOOD. ANIMALS EAT ONE ANOTHER WITHOUT QUALM; CIVILIZED MEN CONSUME ONE ANOTHER BY DUE PROCESS OF LAW.
Will and Ariel Durant. The Lessons of History
Epigraphs to Cod by Mark Kurlansky (New York: Penguin Books, 1997)
Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future And time future contained in time past. T. S. Eliot, “Burnt Norton” Epigraph to The Murder Room by P.D. James
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003)
As soon as possible he (THE WHITE MAN) will tell me that it is not enough to try to be white, but that a white totality must be achieved.
Frantz Fanton, Black Skin, White Mask
Epigraph to Asian American: Historical Crossing to a Racial Frontier by David Palumbo-Liu (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1999
KISS/KISSING
Kissing is our greatest invention. On the list of great invention, it ranks higher than the thermos bottle and the airstream trailer; higher even than room service, possibly because the main reason room service was created was so that people could stay in bed and kiss without going hungry.
Tom Robbins. Wild Ducks Flying Backward (New York: Bantam Books, 2005)
NOTES FOR A MONOLOGUE NEVER TO BE DELIVERED
I was up early last Sunday morning and on the television a man announced he was going to teach viewers some screwing terminology. My wife was sleeping so I thought ‘Well, a little sex education can’t possibly hurt As good as going to church. Boy, was I disappointed. It turned out I was watching THIS OLD HOUSE. I guess that is pornography for persons who are intimate with lumber.
AN UNFORTUNATE PRODUCTION OF MACBETH
J, as a director made one of the worse casting decisions ever made. He cast a pair of Siamese Twins to play Lady Macbeth, He and the producers believed that such a choice would guarantee a full house at every performance. Unfortunately, rehearsals did not go very well, because the sisters –Irma and Veronica – continually argued over which line belonged to whom.
The director attempted to assign lines, but that didn’t work well, because Irma accused him of favoring her sister over her.
IRMA: She gets all the best lines.
DIRECTOR: In Shakespeare everybody gets the best lines!
IRMA: Oh, yeah! I get to say
&
The straw that broke the camel’s back (so to speak) was first night of previews when two incidents occurred that
ruined the production and upended the mood of the invited audience and assorted investors. It happened during the famous Sleepwalking scene, a scene which had been apportioned to Irma in order to counter her accusations about favoritism. During the scene, the envious Veronica fell asleep. Perhaps Veronica believed that falling asleep would add an air of verisimilitude to a the action, but Irma started her slow descent down a long and highly polished stairs and started to snore loudly, very loudly. Unfortunately, the audience found the snoring quite funny and no amount of Blank Verse could overcome the peals of laughter. In order to wake her up semi-beloved and semi-conscious sister, Irma hit her sister with the candle and candle-holder, knocking her sister to the ground. Naturally, wherever Veronica goes so goeth Irma, and soon they were both rolling around Macbeth’s castle as if the cavernous room had been created for a roller-derby match. Much hair-pulling, snarling, and name-calling that would have made the three weird sisters jealous. Indeed, language used by the sisters could have taught Shakespeare a thing or do, making up in fecundity what it lacked as blank-verse poetry. Before the sisters could be separated (as it were) by extras who had been lolling behind the drapes, Irma’s dress caught fire from the candle that also had been quite active in the fray, Thank God the stage hands were prompt with the fire-extinguishers and the curtain came quickly down on the unfortunate production.
**
BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE #4
**
EPITAPHS Beneath this stone our Bobby lies. He neither crys or hollers. He lived just one and twenty days And cost us forty dollars. Burlington Cemetery, Vermont ** Under this Marble, or under this Sill, Or under this Turf, or ev’n what they will, Whatever an Heir, or a Friend in his stead, Or any good creature shall lay o’er my head, Lies one who ne’er cared, and still cares not a pin What they said, or may say, of the mortal within… Alexander Pope, an epitaph he wrote for himself
“I would be satisfied if they wrote on my tombstone, ‘He made people happy.” Charles Schulz, creator of PEANUTS. Quoted in SCHULZ AND PEANUTS by David Michaelis (New York:HarperCollins, 2007)
What noted American entertainer is buried under a tombstone that reads:
THAT'S ALL FOLKS
Answer at the end of this blog.
THUNDERSTORM OVER MANHATTAN
Ba da bing, ba da boom.
Ba da boom, ba da bing.
Fagehdaboutit.
**
According to the HARVARD HEALTH LETTER (27 HEALTH REVELATIONS)
"Laughter has been found to lower levels of stress hormones, reduce inflammation
in the arteries, and increase 'good' HDL cholesterol."
MAY NOT BE AN ASSET ON A FIRST DATE
I sd blah blah with charm & wit.
She sd that’s true, so true.
I asked, “What is Truth?”
She replied, “I’m sorry. I must be going.”
SHOES
Any woman who, through the use of high heeled shoes or other devices, leads a subject of her Majesty into marriage shall be punished with the penalties of witchery.
Seventeenth Century Decree of Parliament
**
With the exception of chocolate dentures, there’s probably nothing in this world more impractical than glass shoes: their life expectancy must be as short as their discomfort level is horrific. So was Cinderella a naïve ditz, a dingbat with masochistic tendencies?
Tom Robbins. “Slipper Sipping” in Wild Ducks Flying Backward (New York: Bantam Books, 2005).
“I didn’t have 3,000 pairs of shoes. I had only 1,060.”
Imelda Marcos
**
“He (ED WYNN) had a collection of over eight hundred funny hats and three hundred bizarre jackets and coats that adorned his tall, pear-shaped frame. Also, an important part of his comical getup were his flapping over-sized shoes…”
Stanley Green. The Great Clowns of Broadway (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984)
**
ETYMOLOGICAL NOTE
Auto-da-Fe (Portuguese, literally “an act of faith) from the Latin actus, act and fidex, faith. A day set apart by the Inquisition for examining heretics, who, if not acquitted, were burned. TheInquisition burned their victims, being forbidden to shed blood; the Roman Church holding Ecclesia non novit sanguinem (the Church is untainted with blood).
Henry Frederic Redall. Fact, Fancy, and Fable.
Chicago: A.C. McLurg & Co., 1889)
COLLEGE NOTE # 1
I must unlearn what I have learned,
Undo so much of what I think I know.
No doubt I shall jettison many subjects.
Algebra is the first to go.
'***
COLLEGE NOTE #2
John Stuart Mill
Gives students much to mull
Over One idea & the next.
I wonder: can I resell my text?
NATURE’S BEDROOM River Beds Sheets of rain. Blankets of fog. Who does Nature’s Laundry?
,
**
COLLEGE NOTE # 3
My friends are texting left & right.
Others are on the tennis courts.
I have to memorize this poem for my English Class.
No wonder I am out of sorts.
**
AUTHOR’S NOTE
One of my favorite writers is Saki. Christopher Morley said of him: “There is no greater compliment to be paid the right kind of friend than to hand him Saki, without comment.” Here is Saki’s Author’s note to his novel The Unbearable Bassington:
The Story has no moral. It points out an evil at any rate it suggests No remedy,
LA TRIVIATA #30
1. The oldest living animal that we have record of lived to be 405 years old. What species of animal?
A. clam
B. snail
C. Amoeba
D. tubeworm
2 . Beginning with Larry Corcoran, who pitched in the 1880s) there have been only 6 major league pitchers who pitched 3 no-hitters. Name any 3
on that short list.
3. What does the medical term “The Great Pretender” refer to?
4. The song :”The Great Pretender” (Ooh ooh yes I’m the great pretender (ooh ooh) was first sung in 1955 by what singer?
5. Talking about singers, Frank Sinatra said, “Sammy’s words fit my mouth the best.” Whom is the Sammy refer to?
6. Who was the first president to be inaugurated in Washington D.C.?
7. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a staff
of how many staff members?
A) 800 B) 1,300 C) 1,800 D) 2,200 E) 2,800
8) What is the longest river in Europe?
9) To what state in the United States would you
have to go to in order to visit the Motorcycle
Hall of Fame Museum?
10) On March 10, 1876 , who said “Mr. Watson –Come here—I want to see you.” Why is the
sentence significant to United States history?
11. During the Civil War, Union soldiers sometimes resorted to eating Skillygalee to
gain nourishment. What is Skillygalee?
12. What U.S. city is the only city to be ranked no. 1 as
“The Best Place to Live in America” more than once?
13. In 1949, the very first cartoon made especially for
television made its appearance. What was the title
(it is the name of the series’ main character)?
14. Who was the first black American actor to amass a million dollars, much of that fortune made possible by
his work in films at major Hollywood studios?
15. What word means to cheat by cunning or daze with tricks. According to one dubious etymology, It is a gypsy word meaning to dress a man in bamboos to teach him swimming. Like the bladders used for the same purpose by little-wanted boys the apparatus is dangerous and deceitful?
16, “Gangway! Gangway for de Lawd God Jehovah.”
According to drama critic John Mason Brown, ‘The modern theatre has produced no entrance cue better known or more affectionately remembered. These are words which even when read makes the heart stand still.” What 20th century play is Mr. Brown referring to?
17. This Academy Award winning actor in 1966, the son of
Milton Matuschanskayasky , described himself as the
“Ukranian Gary Grant”?
18. What particle, a quantum of light, carries energy proportional to the radiation frequency but has zero rest mass?
19. The NFL Minnesota Vikings placekicker Fred Cox
created the Nerf Football. NERF is actually an acronym. What do the initials stand for?
20. The long-playing musical album “CALYPSO” is said to be the first album by a single artist to sell more than a million copies. Who was the singer?
ANSWERS:
1. A (clam, named Ming by the scientists who studied him).
2. Justin Verlander, Nolan Ryan, Bob Feller, Sandy Koufax, and Cy Young
3. The Great Pretender is a disorder that mimics real disorders, thus puzzling doctors and medical specialists..
4. Freddy Mercury. On Youtube, Freddy Mercury’s music video of “The Great Pretender”
is the official version of the song.
5. Sammy Cahn, song writer.
6. Thomas Jefferson
7. D (2,200)
8. The Volga (2,190 miles long)
9. Ohio (Pickerington, Ohio)
10. Alexander Graham Bell. He was transmitting the world’s first telephone message. Thomas Watson was his assistant.
11. Skillygalee was hardtack (very hard crackers)
soaked in water, then fried in pork fat.
12. Nashua, New Hampshire (1987 and 1998)
13. Crusader Rabbit
14. Lincoln Perry (1896-1985). His movie name
was Stepin Fetchit.
15. Bamboozle
16. The Green Pastures by Marc Connelly
17. Walter Matthau. He said, “Doing a play is like eating a seven-course meal, but a movie is like eating a lot of hors-d’oeuvres. You get filled up, but you’re never quite satisfied.”
18. Photon
19. NERF – Non-Expanding Recreational Foam
20. Harry Belafonte
(If you get 10 questions right, consider yourself a trivia mavin!)
For readers who enjoy off-beat/fun quizzes my collection of quizzes LA TRIVIATA (published by World Audience) is available from AMAZON.
THE NAME CHAIN GAME
A name chain consists of a list of all-well known names with the last name
Forming the first name of the next person upon the list. The challenge is to
get from a given first name to a predetermined last name in the fewest
possible moves, using well-known names from real or fiction.
For example: Can you get from BOY GEORGE to GORDON LIGHTFOOT in 4 moves’
1. BOY GEORGE
2.______________________________
3. _______________________________
4 GORDON LIGHTFOOT
one solution:
BOY GEORGE
George Herman “Babe” Ruth
Ruth Gordon
GORDON LIGHTFOOT
Now can you get from The Lone Ranger to Edgar Allan Poe?
**
Answer to epitaph question: Mel Blanc (1908-1989). He provided the voice for numerous animated characters, such as Bugs Bunny & Sylvester the Cat.
HESTER PRYNNE GIVES THIS SITE AN A RATING
