Author Archives: louisprofphillips

BASEBALL, LA TRIVIATA #36, 2 poems If you’re playing baseball  and thinking about managing, you’re crazy. You’d be better off thinking about being an owner.  Casey Stengel There are plenty of Hank Aarons…in spring training.    Bobby Cox We have Three big leagues now. There’s the American, the National, and there’s Ted Williams. Mickey Harries Continue reading “BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE”

A NOTE ON FUDGE & FUDGING The following caption appeared on the Front Page of The New York Times (April 20,2020):            YOUNG LEADER, FUDGING               FACTS FINDS THE RIGHT The news caused me to be curious how fudge & fudging came to be associated with avoiding telling the truth or providing misleading information (TRUMP FUDGEContinue reading “BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE #15”

I suppose the dumb movies of the past were relaxed because they weren’t trying to do anything much, apart from getting Doris Day married off, or maneuvering as many confrontations between Joan Crawford and Bette Davis as possible. Penelope Gilliatt . The New Yorker (July 13, 1968) **     Not everybody who speaks about languageContinue reading “FILMS #2”

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. Continue reading “PUZZLES & QUIZZES”

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.Continue reading “BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE-#12”

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. **Continue reading “BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE#11A”

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 likeContinue reading “BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE #10”

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 boyfriendContinue reading “A FUNNY THING HAPPENED TO ME ON THE WAY TO THIS BLOG”

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 150Continue reading “BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE -#8”

‘ 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” essentialContinue reading “PHILLIPS’ MISCELLANY #7”