BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: WORDS,WORDS, WORDS

"The other night I was reading the dictionary. I thought 
it was a poem about everything."
                               Steven Wright
**
AMERICA'S LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE HOT DOG
|
"Most recently, a hot debate over whether
a hot dog is a sandwich has arisen, with
experts weighing in on both sides. The 
Merriam-Webster Dictionary stated its
website that the hot dog is a sandwich,
defined as 'two or more slices of bread
or a split roll having a filling in between,"
but the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council
disagrees. It declared:'Limiting the hot dog's
significance by saying it's just a sandwich'
category is like calling the Dalai Lama 
'just a guy."

Juan Jose' Sanchez."The Hot Dog: American
Icon" in National Geographic History, vol.7,
No.3.
**





Have you heard that the word gullible has been 
removed from the O.E.D.?  
             (from the Friar's Club book of jokes)
***
If  sentimentality is the word use to insult emotion – 
in its simplified, degraded, and
Indulgent forms—then “saccharine” is the
word they use to insult sentimentality. It 
Traces back to the Sanskrit sarkara, meaning
‘gravel’  or ‘grit.’ It means ‘like sugar.’until
the nineteenth century, when it started to
mean ‘too much.’ It started as a concept but
turned into a danger….”


Leslie Jamison. The Empathy Exams (Minneapolis: 
Graywolf Press, 2004)
**

ON CABOPHOBIA

"I've had cab drivers pull over to the curb to tell
me about some relative who ought to be the show.
That's why I've got cabophobia -- the fear of being
talked to death in an enclosed space."

JOHNNY CARSON. Playboy Interview (December 1967)



…(KEVIN) Klein says “He  (NICHOLS) loved actors—he was thespiphilic, even though there’s no such word.

”

Mark Harris. Mike Nichols: A Life (New York:
Penguin Press, 2021)

PUTTING UP FRANK SINATRA'S DUKES




DUKING – for Frank Sinatra, it referred to tipping, usually hundred dollar bills

“The phrase is lifted  from the saloons of Tin Pin Alley, wherein if a crumb ‘dipped his duke 
in the tambourine,” he was in fact skimming from the cash register, grabbing extra bread 
on the sly. Sinatra’s tambourine over-flowed
for dukes everywhere, ever sly.”



Bill Zehme. Frank Sinatra and the Lost Art of
Livin’ (New York: HarperCollins, 1997)







BUS OR TRUCK? THE DIFFICULTY OF GETTING PRECISE QUOTATIONS


When Jack Nicholson was cast to play opposite 
Meryl Streep in Heartburn, she  was concerned 
that Nicholson would tip the movie away from 
the woman’s point of view In Mark Harris’s 
Mike Nichols: A Life (New York:  Penguin Press, 
2021)Meryl Streep went to Mike Nichols and
“This movie is about the person who got
hit by the bus. It is not about the bus.”
(p.400)


   In She  Made Me Laugh: My Friend Nora Ephron 
by Richard Cohen (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016),
 Cohen writes:

“Almost imperceptibly, the story started to drift 
his way. Nora probably noticed, but she was the writer 
and in no position to countermand Nichols. Streep was, 
and she stepped . “I said  this is about a person who
got hit by the truck. It’s not about the truck”
(p. 172)







About Parlance

Parlance derives from the Old French “parler,” meaning “speak,” and from the Latin noun “parabola,” meaning “comparison.”
Did you Know? The parlance in the 1998 movie “The Big Lebowski” is so quotable for audiences because characters often repeat specific phrases they’ve heard other people say in prior conversation. In fact, both The Dude (played by Jeff Bridges) and Maude (played by Julianne Moore) slip the phrase “the parlance of our times” into their own parlance.


WORD GENIUS (JUNE 30th,2021)










SELF DEFINING ETYMOLOGY


“We verb ‘puzzle’ – to perplex or confuse, bewilder or bemuse—is of unknown origin. 
“ That kind of fits,” said Martin Demaine, an
artist in residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . “It’s a puzzle where the word ‘puzzle; comes from.”

   His son, Erik Demaine, an M.I.T, computer scientist, agreed. “It’s a self-describing etymology,” he said.

Stobhan Roberts. 

“To Crack These Codes, Math and a Tight Crease” in The New York Times (ScienceTimes (June 29,2021) 


Shakespeare used the word puzzled in Twelfth Night: “ There is no darkness but ignorance
In which thou art more puzzled than the Egyptians in their fog.” (IV, 2, 48)



RATFUCK 

“…privately he was happy to have (ELAINE) May back in his life. “Once we got over being mad at each other, we could come together for this or that ratfuck” –Nichols’s favorite word for any event that involved a lot of well-known and/or well-heeled people. “


Mark Harris. Mike Nichols: A Life (New York:
Penguin Books, 2021)

**

“(Tom) Stoppard’s erudition sometimes terrified the cast.  At one point he said, ‘Cynthia, that passage wants to be a little more…plangent.’ The actors  sat very still. ‘None of us had ever heard that word,” says Gallagher…
 …
 ‘Oh, plangent…:’ Tom says. ‘Mike?’  Mike says,
‘Fuck, if I know.’ Tom says, “’A guitar is more plangent than a trumpet..’ Nothing. Nothing.
Then he reaches down and he says. ‘ It’s as if you were to take a pebble and drop it into the pool from a very small height.  Plangent. ‘  We’re Oh my
God! That was plangent.”

Mark Harris.  Mike Nichols: A Life (New York:
Penguin Books, 2021).