I never believed in Santa Claus because I knew no
white dude would come into my neighborhood after dark.
Dick Gregory
**
BAREBAKE RIDER MAE WEST WITH TALL TALES AS OVERHEARD BY CHESTER CONKLIN
" 'All the men in my family were bearded," he said, "and
most of the women.' Then he went into details about an
aunt of his -- she had some impossible name he'd made up,
...who had a red beard down to her waist. 'She wore it
tucked into her vest,' he told Miss Worth. Later on,
between stills, I heard him explaining that he'd got
his red nose by bruising it on a cocktail glass in his
extreme youth. I think she was a little shocked' "
Robert Lewis Taylor. W.C. Fields: His Follies & Fortunes
(Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1949)
**
WHEN VICTOR BORGE AND HIS WIFE FLED FROM THE NAZIS AND ARRIVED IN AMERICA, HE KNEW NO ENGLISH AND COULD NOT PEFORM HIS MUSIC/COMEDY ACT
"While the Danish comedian could speak Swedish, French,
and German, he knew no English. After trying unsucessfully
to learn from his wife and from a language school, he taught himself American English by going to inexpensive movies and sitting through many showings while he repeated the
'dialogue with the actors. This he did for months,
sometimes picking up a gangsterism or comic dialect which
he would later have to discard, but finally he was able to translate some of his comedy routines into English and
memorize them."
Current Biography 1946
**
Customer: "Oh, waiter!"
Waiter: "Yes, what's the matter?"
Customer: "Taste the soup"
Waiter: "You always have the soup. Today you don't like
it? Look, mister, you don't like the soup, I'll bring
you another soup."
Customer: "Taste the soup."
Waiter: "All right; all right already! I'll taste the soup.
Where's the spoon?"
Customer: "Ah. Ha!!"
"This chestnut reflects a major characteristic -- love of drama. Why not just ask the waiter for a spoon? Because there's no drama to it, that's why. Many consider 'Taste the soup' the quintessential Jewish joke because it beautifully illustrates the Jewish tendency to make a big production out of a mundane situation."
Robert Menchin. 101 Classic Jewish Jokes. (Mistay Publishers, 1998
**
"I'm no cook. When I want lemon on chicken, I spray it with Pledge." Joan Rivers
**
ON THE IMPORTANCE OF HAVING THE RIGHT NAME?
When he first started he got a job as the opening act
at a club. He was using his real name - Dallas Burrows.
Each night he came out on stage and said "Hi I'm
Dallas Burrows - Harvard 48" then after a pause
"Yale 0." Each night the joke fell flat. The piano
player told him that the problem wasn't the joke,
it was his name, and that he needed a funny name.
So he tried different names each night (including
Roger Duck). One night he said "Hi, I'm Orson Bean
Harvard 48" and the crowd roared. He used Orson
Bean from then on.
from iMDb Trivia -Orson Bean
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0004730/trivia/?ref_=nm_ql_
**
ON CLOWNS & CLOWNING & THE FAMOUS TEACHER
OF CLOWNS PHILIPPE GAULIER
“Compared with other clowning teachers, Gaulier said
he does not emphasize technique or physical
virtuosity. His pedagogy aims for something more
intangible nurturing a childlike spirit, a sense of
play onstage. The most important quality in a clown
is keeping things light and present, and as he said
with utmost respect, stupid. Finding ‘your idiot,
’ as he calls it, is the essence of clowning, which,
unlike comic acting, requires a performer to stick
with the same character. ‘A clown is a special kind
of idiot, absolutely different and innocent,’ he said.
‘A marvelous idiot.’”
Jason Zinoman. “A Big Reason For the Tears of a Clown” in
The New York Times (January 19, 2022)
**
"There were four million people in the American Colonies and we had Jefferson and Franklin. Now we have over 200 million and the two top guys are Clinton and Dole. What can you draw from this? Darwin was wrong."
Mort Sahl
**
MORT SAHL
Sahl, Mort
Reading Mallory's Morte
d'Arthur, said "Folks,
I ask you. Did Arthur's knights ever tell jokes?"
**
"One time, during the recent war, an Air Force sergeant accosted Robert Benchley in a bar and, with little or no preamble, said, 'I might as well tell you that I don't like your work.' Benchley replied that he had moments of doubt himself, and the sergeant then explained that he had hitched a ride from Africa to Italy on a cargo plane, and that the only available sleeping space had been on bags that were full of oversea editions of Benchley's books. By the time they passed Sicily, the man said, he was so stiff and sore that he hoped never to hear the name Benchley again. 'Try it yourself sometime,' he concluded. 'That stuff isn't funny when you have to sleep on it.'"
Nathaniel Benchley. The Benchley Roundup (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1983) **
“ All writers must woo and win readers, and readers are wooed and won, today as yesterday, by stories of flawed, sympathetic people who do big and significant things despite many obstacles put in their way. The bigger the obstacles and the more grooved-in the personal flaws, the better the story.”
Adam Gopnik .”Finding the Founders” in The New Yorker (October 31, 2022)
** “In the marriages of celebrated literati throughout history, husband is to fame as wife is to footnote."
from LIVES OF THE WIVES: FIVE LITERARY MARRIAGE by Carmela Ciuraru **
ELAINE STERNE CARRINGTON--20,000 WORDS A WEEK
"The author of two of radio's most popular daytime serials, Pepper Young's Family and When a Girl Marries, is Eleanor Sterne Carrington, a prolific writer who produces not only her 20,000 words a week for radio, but three-act plays for Broadway, many short stories for magazines, patriotic scripts, and (as a hobby) popular songs.
Current Biography 1943
**
FROM THE WRITER MICHAEL GOODMAN
Once, asked about his writing routine, E. L. Doctorow said: "Here's how it goes: I'm up at the stroke of 10 or 10:30. I have breakfast and read the papers, and then it's lunchtime. Then maybe a little nap after lunch and out to the gym, and before I know it, it's time to have a drink."
Sounds fun, but how do those damned books get written?
** T. CAMPBELL -- PALINDROMIC NOVELS
"... from a wordplay perspective, one of our greatest losses is a far more modern one: Satire: Veritas by David Stephens, a palindromic novella published informally in 1980. It’s not quite the longest palindrome—that would be Dr. Awkward and Olson in Oslo, by Lawrence Levine, a bizarre, often nonsensical detective story. And I can find no information about Satire: Veritas’ actual content…one assumes it’s a satire, but that’s all we got."
T.Campbell. "Lost Works" -email (July 31, 2023)
**
ON MONEY AND THE SUN ALSO RISES
“Originally published in 1926, with its title taken from a particularly down-in-the-mouth section of Ecclesiastes, Sun was notorious because its main character, Jake Barnes, was sexually impotent owing to a wound suffered to World War I. Even Papa’s own mother had called it ‘one of the filthiest books of the year.’ Papa had given it to his first wife, Hadley, as part of her divorce settlement , and she’d sold it practically right then and there for ten thousand dollars. By the time Darryl F. Zanuck decided he wanted to turn it into a movie nearly three decades later, those same rights cost him a hundred and twenty-five thousand, none of which came home to Papa.”
Ava Gardner. AVA: MY STORY (New York: Bantam Books, 1990)
**
“The progress of any writer is marked by those moments when he manages to outwit his own inner police systems.” Ted Hughes
**
THE WORLD’S OLDEST SURVIVING ROYAL LIBRARY
“The world’s oldest surviving royal library (is) that of King Ashurbanipal of the Assyrian Empire in the city of Nineveh, close to modern-day Mosul in Northern Iraq. Ashurbanipal assembled a vast library of written works from across Mesopotamia. This amounted to 30,000 tablets, containing everything from rituals, medical encyclopedias, astronomical observations and the exploits of royals. The writer called it ‘the most precious source of historical material in the world,’ but it was reduced to rubble and burned when the city was sacked in 612 BC.” I see evidence of this first-hand during my trip to the British Museum, where the remains of this library are now stored, their blackened scorch marks still visible.”
Alison George. “Cracking the Code” in New Scientist (Spring 2023)
** THE BIG WOW-WOW
"Only 150 years ago Walter Scott was able to pay tribute to Jane Austen's mastery of "the exquisite touch on commonplace thing," while reserving for himself what he called the Big Wow-Wow."
Shirley Hazzard. We Need Silence to Find Out What We Think (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016) **
"As for me, I think about what I have always thought about -- literature. I try to take hold of everything I see; I'd like to imagine something. But what, I don't know. It seems to me that I have become utterly stupid."
FLAUBERT (translated by Francis Steegmuller)
**
EDGAR A. POE
If Edgar A. Poe Had created Winnie the Pooh, Eeyore wd kick and bite, And young children wouldn't sleep at night.
JOHN BUCHAN
John Buchan-- Wrote less about fuckin' & more about spies. I wonder: was that wise?
** PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Percy Bysshe Shelley Placed his hands on his wife's belly & recited: "Hail to thee, blithe spirit". He hoped his unborn child might hear it.
BOB MUNDEN
"Bob Munden was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records
as “The Fastest Man with a Gun Who Ever Lived”. One
journalist reckoned that if Munden had been at the OK
Corral in Tombstone, Arizona, on October 26, 1881,
the gunfight would have been over in 5 to 10 seconds."
iMBd
**
JASPER MASKELYN
" Every magician, at their core, is a master of deception.
But when Jasper Maskelyne moved his act from the stage to
the theater of war, his deception skills were used to save lives. During World War II, Maskelyne joined the British military and used his knowledge as an illusionist to trick
the Nazis. His team took camouflage to a new level,creating deceptive decoys to trick enemy fighter pilots: fake harbors filled with phony boats and dazzling light-displays that, from above, looked like cities. The illusions reportedly caused the enemy to waste tons of ammunition."
INTERESTING FACTS. June14, 2023
nterestingfacts.com/influential-magicians/Yp6adVuKogAHE3uP?liu=bc6ace8ab3f84bb0bb64e2ba0affc64f&utm_source=blog&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1819019860
**
HEMINGWAY MEETS ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
"Mrs. Roosevelt is enormously tall, very charming, and almost stone deaf. She hears practically nothing that is said to her but is so charming that most people do not notice it.."
ERNEST HEMINGWAY in a letter to Mrs. Paul Pfeiffer.
2 August 1957. Ernest Hemingway's Selected Leters,
1917-1961, edited by Carlos Baker.
**
GAIL GREENE
I have dedicated myself to the wanton indulgences of my senses. And I shall consider it fitting and divine if on my deathbed my last words echo those of Pierette, the sister of Brillat-Savarin, who died at table shortly before her one-hundredth birthday “Bring on the dessert. I think I’m about to die.”
Gael Greene, quoted in her New York Times obituary
(November 2, 2022)
**
ON THE DEATH OF THE AUTHOR OF BREAKFASTAT TIFFANYS
Capote
Kaput.
LJP
**
HENRY JAMES’S FOREHEAD
“…his forehead was more like a dome, it was a whole street.”
**
Max Beerbohm
David Cecil. Max (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company., 1964)
**
ARCHIBALD LEACH& CARY GRANT
It is well-known by most film fans that the birthname of
Cary Grant was Archibald Leach. Archibald Leach was
A name mentioned by Grant in a few of his movies.
Less known is the remarkable coincidence that occurred
When Grant married the heiress Barbara Hutton. The story was recounted by Jeffrey Lyons in his book Stories My Father Told Me Me (New York: Abbeville Press, 2011):
CARY GRANT & HIS MARRIAGE TO BARBARA HUTTON
Grant was asked why his marriage to Barbara Hutton, the richest woman in the world, didn’t last. ‘Tell you why,’ Grant
explained. I was making $14,000 a week and still felt like a kept man.’ Another reason might have been the fact that Hutton had a long time chauffeur whose name was Archie Leach !”
**
DOROTHY PARKER IN THE HOSPITAL
"There was something about hospitals that struck her
as being lugubrious. She was always funny about hospitals.
She called this one Bedpan Alley. When Alexander
Woollcott came to call, she immediately rang for the
nurse -- in order, she told Mr. Woollcott, to assure
them forty-five minutes of absolutely privacy.But
the funniest thing of all was that she did not have
enough money to pay her bill..."
John Keats. The Life and Times of Dorothy
Parker You Might As Well Live (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1970)
**
LORD BYRON & LADY CAROLINE LAMB
Lady Caroline Lamb is “said to have surprised
her lover Lord Byron by having herself
served naked in a large soup tureen during
her husband’s birthday dinner.”
Adrian Tinniswood. The Rise and Fall of the
English Country House After World War II
(New York: Basic Books, 2021)
**
LORD BYRON
George Gordon Byron, Lord
Frequently was bored
In lands sunny & shady
Except when he was seducing a married lady.
**
On Ramsey MacDonald
“ (AT BARNUM’S CIRCUS) the exhibit on
the programme I most desired to see was
the one described as the Boneless Wonder.
My parents judged that the spectacle would
be too revolting and demoralizing for my
youthful eyes, and I have waited fifty years
to see the boneless wonder sitting on the
Treasury bench.”
Winston Churchill
**
JOHNNY INKSLINGER HOPS ON A TRAIN
TO AMHERST, MASSACHUSETTS, IN ORDER
TO GO ON A BLIND DATE WITH MS. EMILY
DICKINSON
There is a certain slant of rime that oppresses,
But yrs afterwards I still sing her praises.
Ha! Ha! Ha! Whatja two do?
Still carrying the torch?
Skinny dip together thru deep pools of grief?
No. Not quite.
Merely sat on her front porch,
Undressed with our eyes Nature.
Reminisced a bit about Ben Newton
Or Charles Wadsworth,
Who moved to California.
How empty the whole house of poesy seemed,
An entire upstairs collapsed with ghosts, couch
& armchairs covered with white sheets,
Poems stitched together,
Hidden away in drawers.
From room to room we went,
Leaning toward eternity, silently,
Not speaking a single word.'
We live our lives with others, then they die,
Or disappear completely.
We call out to the disappeared
But NO ONE ANSWERS,
Until the opening of single door becomes
Too painful to contemplate.
Shall we sleep together?
We paused in the garden of earthly delights,
Eavesdropping to half an ounce of blackpoll warbler,
She turned to me and said:
"First chill, then stupor, then the letting go."
I understood what she meant,
But too late. Far too late for me, for her, for all of us.
Louis Phillips
from AMERICAN ELEGIES (World Audience Books, 2009)
"Since the world couldn't be stopped in its headlong rush,
it was best just to laugh at it. The devil laughed, because
he knew life had no meaning; the angels as they flew over, laughed too knowing what the meaning was."
from an unsigned obituary of Milan Kundera in
The Economist (July 22nd, 2023)
**
MORT SAHL
Sahl, Mort
Reading Mallory's Morte
d'Arthur, said "Folks,
I ask you. Did Arthur's knights ever tell jokes?"
**
SEX QUEENS & SELF PARODY
In the movies, the sex queen, the Theda Bara, the Mae West,
the Harlow, the Marilyn Monroe-- even the Garbo--always ends up
playing a parody of herself. It is as if the audience cannot stand for long this physical manifestation of its dream life.
It must it a certain point relieve the inner tension, engendered by such stars through laughter. With considerable relief, the critics burst into print with the information that the symbol has become an extremely talented comedienne."
Richard Schickel in Movie Comedy, edited by Stuart Byron and Elizabeth Weis
**
OF TRIVIA AS A BASIS FOR HUMOR
“Which is trivia – the diamond or the elephant? Any humorist must be interested in trivia, in every little thing that occurs in a household. It’s what Robert Benchley did so well that one of the greatest fears of the humorous writer is that he has spent three weeks writing something done faster and better by Benchley in 1919. Incidentally, you never got very far talking to Benchley about humor. He'd do a take off on Max Eastman’s Enjoyment of Laughter. ‘ We must understand,’ he’d say, ‘that all sentences which begin with W are funny.’”
James Thurber, interviewed by George Plimpton and
Max Steiner. Writers at Work (New York: The Viking
Press, 1958).
**
RITA RUDNER
**
"The shortest distance between two points is
under construction."
Noilie Alito
**
THE BEST JOKES ARE DANGEROUS
"The telling of jokes is an art of its own, and it always
rises from some emotional threat. The best jokes are
dangerous, and dangerous because they are in some way
truthful."
Kurt Vonnegut
**
AN EMAIL EXCERPT FROM WORD PLAY EXPERT T.CAMPBELL (July 31,2023)
"Magrites by Homer (maybe) was supposed to be as much a classic comedy as the Iliad and Odyssey were great epics. Aristotle himself said so. Not much is known about it except that the title character was such an utter buffoon that his name became an insult. A few quotations from it survive in other classic works, including this great line in Plato: “He knew many things, but he knew them badly.”
**
“A German joke is no laughing matter.”
Mark Twain
**
ON JOKE BOOKS AS REFERENCE WORKS
“A joke book is a work of reference, an example of DeQuincy’s literature of knowledge. A work of Humor belongs to the literature of power.”
Clifton Fadiman in The New Yorker (November 28, 1942)
**
SATIRE & PARODY --TWO PERSPECTIVES
"There is parody, when you make fun of people who are smarter than you: satire, when you make fun of people richer than you; and burlesque, when you make fun of both while taking your clothes off."
P.J. O'Rourke, in Age and Guile Beat and a Bad Haircut (1995)
**
"When Henry Kissinger can get the Nobel Peace Prize,
what is there left for satire."
Tom Lehrer
**
**
FAME IS FLEETING
Buster Keaton, in his autobiography --"My Wonderful World of Slapstick" (1960) wrote "Frank Tinney, whom many theatrical people considered the greatest natural comedian of his day."
....
"During the years we were trying to figure out what made movie fans laugh, and why, there was an extraordinary silent-pictures comic who made many successful one-reel and two-reel pictures. His name was Larry Semon, and he was so weird looking that he could have posed either as a pinhead or a Man from Outer Space. His movies were combiations of cartoon gags, fantastic gags, and farcical plots."
Buster Keaton, with Charles Samuels . My Wonderful World of Slapstick (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1960)
**
(gag (n.2)
"a joke," 1863, especially a practical joke, probably related to theatrical sense of "matter interpolated in a written piece by the actor" (1847); or from the sense "made-up story" (1805); or from slang verbal sense of "to deceive, take in with talk" (1777), all of which perhaps are from gag (v.) on the notion of "to stuff, fill." Gagster "comedian" is by 1932.
from Online Etymological Dictionary)
COMEDY & THE TRACKS OF TIME
"Few genres are more desperately tied to the tracks of their times than comedy. It's still enjoyable to see Abbott and Costello joust over a linguistic misunderstanding, but an act such as 'Who's on First?' was much funnier in 1938 when audiences knew that it was mocking the nicknames of popular baseball players. Humor tends to wilt through the decades;
what was once a bite becomes a sloppy kiss."
Rachel Syme,. "It's Not That Deep" in The New Yorker
(April 10, 2023).
**
LAUREL AND HARDY AT 9 A.M
Saps at sea
Yes, I am talking to you.
Why aren't you rolling on the floor,
Holding your sides;
Laurel & Hardy
Are eating sponge meatballs &
Your ribs ache
As you think "What fools
We mortals be."
Exquisite planets never laugh, &
Stars have sharp teeth,
Features that hold their own
In every storm.
Spaghetti made of rope.
Ha! Ha!
Go the angels of our finer natures.
Laughter too displays sharp teeth,
Biting our universe in half.
No need to be so serious;
We are all saps at sea.
God made only one joke in His life,
Guess what He named it.
Look at the fine mess
He has gotten us into.
Louis Phillips
PAGE FROM THE NEW CENTURY DICTIONARY (1944)
**
DEFINITION OF A LIBERAL (circa 1960’s)
“What is a liberal? A liberal finds it in his heart
to forgive Jane Fonda for being in Hanoi, but not
for being in Barbarella.”
David Frost
**
CONFUCIUS ON LANGUAGE& JUSTICE GOING ASTRAY
“If language is not correct, then what is said is not
what is meant; if what is said is not meant, then what
ought to be done remains undone; if this remains undone,
morals and art will deteriorate; if morals and art
deteriorate, justice will go astray; if justice goes
astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence, there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything.”
Confucius
“One should not aim at being possible to understand,
but aim at being impossible to misunderstand.”
Quintillian
See “Who is behind the assault in English”
by Lincoln Arnett in Horizon, volume V (July, 1963)
**
ON PUTTING OUT A FIRE
“ BRITISH INTELLIGENCE: In Newstead Abbey, once the home
of Lord Byron, a sign near s fire hose reads, ‘In case
of fire, press starter switch, take down hose, and proceed
to subdue the outbreak.'"
Cited in The New Yorker(March 12, 1984)
**
SUBCONSCIOUS – What Admiral Rickover was
**
ON BEING A BEAR LEADER OR A FRUMP
A bear-leader is “One who undertakes the charge of
a young man of rank on his travels. It was customary
to lead muzzled bears about the streets, and to make
them show off in order to attract notice and gain money.
Under favor, young gentleman, I am the bear-leader,
being appointed your tutor. – G. Colman, Heir-at-Law
Frump –“The modern dictinaries define this as a cross-tempered, old fashioned woman. This is just the reverse of its original signification which, according to Bailey, was ‘plump, fat, jolly’”
Fact, Fancy, and Fable. 1889
NRACOTIC—The biggest drug in the United States.
Renders the Senate and House of
Representatives completely numb
**
"In a time when the word 'Peace-Keeper" has been
mongrolized to the point where it is the name of
an offense missile."
"The Talk of the Town" in The New Yorker March 12, 1984)
**
cucking-stool (n.)
The Cucking-stool was a means adopted for the punishment of scolds and incorrigible women by ducking them in the water, after having secured them in a chair or stool, fixed at the end of a long pole, serving as a lever by which they were immersed in some muddy or stinking pond. [Willis's Current Notes, February 1851]
early 13c., from verbal noun from cuck "to void excrement,"
from Old Norse kuka "feces," from PIE root *kakka- "to defecate." So called because they sometimes resembled
the old close stool of the pre-plumbing days, a portable
indoor toilet that looked like a chair with a box under
the seat. Old folk etymology made the first element a
corruption of cotquean. For second element, see stool.
Also known as trebucket and castigatory, it was used
on fraudulent tradesmen, in addition to disorderly
women, either for public exposure to ridicule or for
ducking."
On-Line Etymological Dictionary
**
**
“The grossest thing in our gross national product today is our language. It is suffering from inflation.”
James Reston
**
VICTOR BORGE ON "INFLATION & THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE"
**
MAIL BAGS FOR THE OLD PONY EXPRESS
"Mochila" means "knapsack" in Spanish, and it’s the name given to the mailbags used on the Pony Express. They were leather with four pockets and hung over the saddle. The pockets were always kept locked; three of them contained mail and could only be opened at military posts, and the fourth contained a timecard.
Source: National Postal Museum
History Quiz website (January 12, 2023)
**
from CELEBRATIONS & BEWILDERMENTS
(poems based upon passages from Alice in Wonderland)
"They were learning to draw," the Dormouse went on,
yawning and rubbing its eyes for it was getting very
sleepy: "and they drew all manner of things -- everything
that begins with an M..."
"Why with an M?" said Alice.
"Why not?" said the March Hare.
My muse makes merry,
Much music
Made mirthful,
Moon-mad.
More,more,more.
More mischief.
My mien
Mirrors
My moods,
My Mind,
My manners,
Metered motion,
My muse makes melody.
Metaphor mends me,
My mad medley,
Man-matrixed.
Matter mold me,
Mouth mysteries,
Mute miracles.
Mountebank, mourn me,
My measured masque.
My muse moves me.
My metaphor mends me.
Louis Phillips
Celebrations & Bewilderments was originally published
in FRAGMENTS 7, with graphics by Neil Greenberg.
Republished by World Audience Publishers in 2018.
SOWETO, SOUTH AFRICA
“Soweto was designed to be bombed –that’s how forward-thinking the architects of apartheid were. The township was a city unto itself, with a population of nearly one million. There were only two roads in and out. That was so the military could lock us in, quell any rebellion. And if the monkeys ever went crazy and tried to break out of their cage, the air force could fly over and bomb the shit out of everyone. Growing up, I never knew that my grandmother lived in the center of a bull’s eye.”
Trevor Noah. Born a Crime
**
EVERY SAILOR NEEDS A FRIEND
“Somewhere in the Southern ocean, as the immortal Captain Joshua Slocum recounted in his journal Around the World in the Sloop Spray, he was touched to discover that his loneliness was ephemeral. An intrepid spider in the cabin was spinning sidewise while he spun forward, and the knowledge of their companionship inspirited him for the rigors that lay ahead.”
S.J. Perelman. “ Looking For Pussy” in Eastward Ha!
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1977)
**
an excerpt from "The Accidental Hotel," about The Atlanta Hotel, a budget hotel in Bangkok.
"It was the kind of place travelers were always looking for,
a combination restaurant, café, and bistro, where you could
get a good, inexpensive meal, linger for hours over coffee,
or while away a hot afternoon over beer. It was a natural gathering place, and what was best about the restaurant was
what was best about the hotel: the mix of people. In an
age of niche marketing, The Atlanta was an anomaly,; it cut across the usual segregating categories of age, class, and lifestyle. There were has-been hippies and would be hipsters, clean-cut college students and backpacking grandmothers, budget-minded families and middle-aged men on a Bangkok debauch, German scholars of Thai Buddhism, Swedish relief workers on R&R from Cambodia, blue-collar Brits, freelance writers, one or two indigents, and on the sidelines, quietly studying the show, a contingent of local day trippers that included, every Sunday at noon, a small group of That Baptists from a neighborhood church."
From:
Donald A Ranard
The Accidental Hotel
The Best Travel Writing 2005
**
THE TRAVAIL OF TRAVEL
late 14c., "to journey," from travailen (1300)
"to make a journey," originally "to toil, labor"
(see travail). The semantic development may have
been via the notion of "go on a difficult journey,"
but it also may reflect the difficulty of any
journey in the Middle Ages.
Etymological Dictionary On Line
**
CLOSER TO HOME
“I had come from Woburn, Massachusetts, a fine
New England town noted for its rambunctious biker
gangs, its indicted and convicted mayors and the worse
toxic-waste dumping grounds in the United States. But
it’s also an old colonial city with a bronze minuteman
on the town green guarding the white-shingled Methodist
church and a great ivy-covered library with a statue
of Count Rumford on its front lawn.”
Eric Bogosian. Drinking in America (New York:
Vintage Books, 1987).
**
FOR THE FANS OF THE LEGEND & LORE
OF KING ARTHUR
“ A cold, wind driven rain soaks through my parka as I
walk across a narrow foot-bridge that links the Cornwall mainland in southwest England to a rocky promontory
overlooking the Bristol Channel. Far below this
cantilevered span, waves crash against the cliffs
and swirl inside a grotto known as Merlin’s Cave.”
Joshua Hammer. “The Forever Legend” in Smithsonian
Magazine (September 2022)
**
REMEMBER THIS PASSWORD?
“ Dildano's password, "Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch", is the name of a real village in Wales, United Kingdom. It's also the United Kingdom's longest place name.”
IDMb trivia to Barbarella (1968)
**
TRAVELING IN SCOTLAND IN THE 1600'sIn the 17th century,
Sir William Brereton published
his Travels in Holland, etc, (1634-1635), and
alas! he was not so enamored of the household smells
of the good citizens of Edinburgh:
"...their houses and halls, and kitchens, have such
a noisome taste, a savour and that so strong, as it
doth offend you so soon as you come within their
walls; yea, sometimes when I have light from my
horse, I have felt the distaste of it before I have '
come into the house; yea, I never came to my own
lodging in Edinborough, or went out, but I was
constrained to hold my nose...."
**
TRAVEL
Travel begins
Where I am,
With the world
Lieing like
A barnacled sea
Scraped with knowledge
Severe & kind,
This wide-spread space
Holding us together.
Another way is
To tunnel in:
Go in, go out, go far.
To stop is to die,
Strut where spirit
Falters, mind boggles,
Another eye will
Follow you,
Another's hands
Will hold you.
Travel, sail forth,
Kiss & be done.
The briar is not so harsh
As standing still,
Or thorns, stream
Of evenings at our windows
Knocking, rush of moon
Flaking foreign pines
On dense hills beyond.
Travel begins
When the eye roams
Star-jutted with
The constant sweep
Of cloud, Magellan
Spray, space after
Space enduring
Human forms, or light
Alone, Venus-edged.
My bags are packed,
I shall turn &
Say farewell.
Louis Phillips
**
for Nelson & Alex Breen
***********************
ON EATING NEW TESTAMENT LOCUSTS
"The locusts John the Baptist ate are not bugs, but
the flat seed pods of the carob tree -- which are
also the husks fed to swine and the Prodigal Son.They
can now be bought in the markets of Manhattan's lower
East Side as 'St. John's bread."
TIME MAGAZINE. "Religion" (March 31, 1941)
**
MUSTARD
“Mustard runs deep in French culture. “My blood is boiling” is rendered in French by the expression ‘la moutarde me monte au nez,’ or ‘the mustard is rising into my nose’ – and as Bastille Day testifies, when that effect can be devastating.”
Roger Cohen . “Steak Frites Without Mustard? France
Shudders as Jars Vanish” in The New York Times
(July 15, 2022)
**
OYSTERS AND MONTHS THAT HAVE
NO R’S IN THEM
“In 1599, William Butler, a contemporary of Shakespeare, wrote, ‘ It is unseasonable and unwholesome in all months in all months that have no R in their name to ear oysters. “ The myth has an element of truth in the case of New York. Oysters take their cue to begin spawning when the weather warms up, which is in May, and it is true that spawning oysters tend to be thin, translucent and generally less appealing. Some argued that letting the beds rest durin spawning season was a good conservation measure. Summer oysters are, however, perfectly healthy unless spoiled in the market by summer heat.
Mark Kurlansky. The Big Oyster (New York:
Random House Trade Paperback, 2006)
**
APHORISM
The world is nobody's oyster.
The question is:
Who gets the pearls.
LJP
**
"Cucumber should be well sliced, dressed with pepper
and vinegar and then thrown out."
Samuel Johnson
**
THE RIDDLE OF SAINT ALDHEIM (ca. 639-709)
I am black on the outside clad in a wrinkled cover;
Yet within I hear a burning marrow;
I season delicacies,, the banquets of kings, and the luxuries
Of the table,
Both the sauces and the tenderized meat of the kitchen.
But you will find in me no quality of any worth=,
Unless your bowels have been rattled by my gleaming
marrow.
Jack Turner. Spice (New York ;Vintage Books, 2005)
The answer at the end of the blog.
**
CHILLED ICES & ICE CREAM
“It is true that circa 400 B.C. , Hippocrates, or one of the anonymous writers who were known as Hippocrates, warned that snow-chilled beverages might ‘suddenly throw…The body into a different state than it was before producing thereby many ill effects.” It is also true that in 1997 the British Medical Journal noted that ‘ice cream headaches’ can be produced by cold tempratures on the back of the palate, which stimulate the spheno-palatine ganglion to dilate blood vessels in the brain. However, the article concluded with the heartening sentence “Ice cream abstinence is not indicated.”
Anne Fadiman. At Large and At Small. New York:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007)
**
The first product to have a bar code
was Wrigley's gum.
**
MEL BROOKS AND HIS TOMATO SANDWICH
"...my mother would often make a sliced tomato sandwich on a buttered kaiser roll and put it in a paper bag and fling it out the fifth-story window for me to catch and have lunch. I almost never missed, but once when I did, the bag hit the sidewalk and flattened out, drenching the kaiser roll with rich tomato juice from the sliced tomatoes. It was one of the best things that I ever tasted. I loved it. From then on, I always missed it on purpose so the sandwich flattened out. It was probably the first version of a 'pizza' I ever ate."
Mel Brooks. All About Me! (New York: Ballantine Books,
2021)
**
In 17th century Turkey, it was against the law to drink
coffee because authorities claimed it caused bad behavior.
**
Answer to riddle: PEPPER
**
MY DRINKING SONG
Shots of rum
Leave me glum,
But Cherry Heering
Makes me endearing.
**
DINING WITH CANNIBALS
The night I was served
the brains of Ronald Reagan
Was the night I became a vegan.
LJP
'
DR. EDWARD KASNER
"...to the man on the street Professor Kasner will long
be remembered as the man who gave the world the 'google.
The google, a name invented by Kasner's nine year old
nephew, is just another example of how mathrmaticd uses
'easy words for hard ideas.' The definition is simple:
1 followed by 100 zeros, more graphically it is 1,000,
000,000, 000,000,000, 000,000,000, 000,000,000, 000,000,
000, 000,000,000, 000,000,000, 000,000,000, 000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000.,000."
"To elucidate a little, Kasner explains the number of
rain drops falling on New York City in a century is much
less than a google."
Current Biography 1943
**
A BEAUTIFUL MIND (2001) , STARRING RUSSELL CROWE AS
JOHN FORBES NASH,JR.
"From the heights of notoriety to the depths of depravity,
John Forbes Nash, Jr. experienced it all. A mathematical genius, he made an astonishing discovery early in his career
and stood on the brink of international acclaim. But the handsome and arrogant Nash soon found himself on a painful
and harrowing journey of self-discovery. After many years
of struggle, he eventually triumphed over his tragedy, and finally - late in life - received the Nobel Prize.
—Universal Pictures and DreamWorks Pictures
Depths of Depravity?
• The equations seen on the classroom chalk boards
are actual equations written by the real-life John Nash.
IMBd Trivia
**
WHAT IS A HAPPY NUMBER?
It is a happy number, meaning that repeatedly summing
the squares of its digits eventually leads to
1.
FROM A LETTER FROM Francisco Carvalho TO THE AMERICAN POET JOEL SOLANCHE
"There is a limerick story about the famous topologist John Milnor. In the break room at Princeton one afternoon,
a bunch of graduate student were attempting to compose limericks about every faculty member in then math department. It soon became apparent that the greatest difficulty was presented by Christos Papakyriakopoulos, a Greek mathematician famous for his
proofs of Dehn’s lemma and other results in 3-manifold
topology. Milnorn listened to the students’ conversation
but said nothing. After he left, the following was found inscribed on his napkin:
The perfidious lemma of Dehn
Was every topologist’s bane
‘Til Christos D. Pap-
akyriakop-
oulos proved it without any strain.
**
ABOUT THE NUMBER 1,720
In 1918, the mathematician Godfrey Harold Hardy got into a London cab with the identification number 1,720. "At
the time he was on his way to visit his ailing colleague Srinivasa Ramanujan in the hospital, and he mentioned the 'boring' cab number when he arrived. He told Ramanujan he
hoped it wasn't a bad omen. Ramanujan immediately
contradicted his friend. 'It is a very interesting
number: it is the smallest number expressible as a
sum of two cubes in two different ways.'"
Manon Bischoff. "The Most Boring Number" in
Scientific American (June 2023)
**
"The formula for water is H2O and the formula for an
ice cube is H20 squared."
Lily Tomlin
**
THE INTERACTIVE THEORUM ASSISTANT
"One math gadget is called a proof assistant, or interactive theorum prover ("Automath" was an early incarnation in the 1960s). Step by step, a mathematician translates a proof into code, then a software program checks whether the reasoning is correct. Verifications accumulate in a library, a dynamic canonical reference that others can consult. This type of formalization provides a foundation for mathematics today..."
Stobhan Roberts. "A Complex Operation" in The New York Times
JOHN VON NEUMANN
'While not nearly as well-remembered as fellow European emigree and scholar Albert Einstein, John von Neumann was also a certifiable genius who made an enormous imprint on the world around him. Born in 1903 in Budapest, Hungry, his turbo-charged intellect was apparent by the early stages of grade school. Von Neumann could converse in ancient Greek and multiply two eight-digit numbers in his head by age 6 and within two years he was already learning calculus. His dad tried to dissuade his son from a career in mathematics over fears that it was an unsustainable career, but von Neumann not only proved he could make a comfortable living in the field, he also showed his training could be applied to the development of game theory, personal computers, weather forecasting, and other real-world applications."
INTERESTING FACTS WEBSITE (May 17, 2023)
https://www.interestingfacts.com/child-prodigies/YqkYuVuKogAHE31Z?liu=a28bbdc7f2e0154569dc36b4f43a3c0e&utm_source=blog&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1794330409
**
#41"Oh don't bother me!" said the Duchess. "I never could abide figures."
This is the poetry of numbers,
Of 6's & 11's
Five & seven say nothing.
Alice, Alice, with all your tricks,
Wpill you ever escape from P.S.6?
Your telephone nunber is Butterfield 8.
If you concentrate extremely hard,
You'll certainly remember your library card:
5G-87638.
Keep it up, Alice, you're doing fine:
High School registration # - 00059.
Selective service number: 6--09-52-605,
"Hardly a man is now alive.":
Zip Code: 10032
Voter registration certificate: 322433
Membership card for the Museum of
Modern Art: 665567
Code name: 007
Louis Phillips
from CELEBRATIONS & BEWILDERMENTS
World Audience Publishers (2018)
Available on Amazon
CHARLIE CHAPLIN AND GROUCHO MARX HAVE DINNER AT DAVE CHASEN'S
“Last night I had dinner with Chaplin at Dave Chasen’s and he was in high humor – unusual for him. He told me, among other things, that he’s not Jewish but wishes he were. He said he was part Scotch, English, and Gypsy, but I think that he isn’t quite sure what he is. He’s very happy about his movie { The Great Dictator} . He ran it yesterday for the Breen office – it runs over 13,000 feet and there wasn’t a foot cut out of it. He things it will be a big hit. He’s very odd. In some ways he has no sense of humor at all and then again it’s wonderful….”
Groucho Marx in a letter to Arthur Sheekman (September 5, 1940). The Groucho Letters (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1967)
**
HOW THE CRITIC CLIVE JAMES LEARNED ABOUT
MARTIAL ARTS (SORT OF)
“My martial arts skills were learned from martial arts
movies. Nowadays , having attained the status of black
belt with good tassels and diamond clasp, I no longer
need to watch these movies, but they’re everywhere and
some of them are disguised as art, so they can sneak up
on you. An art martial arts movies, or martial arts
art movie, makes meaningless violence meaningful, or
so we’re told.”
Clive James. “Flying People, Flagrant Piffle” in A Point
Of View (London: Picador, 2011)
***
ALBERTO ZAMPERLA’S PUNCHBALL
“He developed the Zamperla Bull, an arcade machine to test a player’s strength as he tries to press the animal’s horns together, and Punchball, another carnival game, modeled on a punching bag, which was featured in the film “Urban Cowboy” (1980), starring John Travolta and Debra Winger.”
“Alberto Zamperla, 71, an Amusement Park Impresario”
By San Roberts (The New York Times, December 29,2022)
**
FILM NOTE #8652
Brahe, Tycho
Did not live long enough to see Psycho.
**
ON ALFRED HITCHCOCK
I've heard people who've worked with Alfred Hitchcock
say that it was not the most exhilarating experience,
and, though I was only about fifteen, I felt something
of that. Hitch had everything in his head before he
went near the set: therefore one was rather moved around
and manipulated, but, having said that, I liked him
very much.
Nova Pilbeam
**
Who is the youngest person to win Best Supporting Actress Oscar?
Tatum O'Neal She won Best Supporting Actress at the 1974 Oscars at the age of 10 for her role in Paper Moon.
**
HOW HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA GOT ITS NAME
In 1886, Harvey Henderson Wilcox, a rich prohibitionist
from Kansas, and his wife, Daeida, purchased 120 acres
of apricot and fig groves near the Cahuenga Pass at $150
an acre. Harvey, an inveterate businessman, realized he
could make a lot of money by subdividing the land and
selling the lots for $1,000 a pop. And so the Wilcox subdivision, as Hollywood was then known, was born.
A year later, on a train journey back to Ohio, Daeida
Wilcox befriended a fellow wealthy traveler who just
happened to own a fine estate in Illinois. Its name was Hollywood. The story goes that Daeida was so taken with
the name that upon her return to California she encouraged Harvey to apply the name to their property. On February 1,
1887, the name was immortalized when Harvey filed a
subdivision map to the Los Angeles County recorder's
office, with the name “Hollywood.”
California Holly: How Hollywood Didn't Get its Name | Natural History Museum (nhm.org)
**
Preview YouTube video Albert Einstein Driving a Flying Car 1931
**
AVA GARDNER & M-G-M’S MORAL CLAUSE
On signing a contract with M-G-M: “I solemnly agreed to conduct myself ‘with due regard to public conventions &]
morals’ and not ‘do or commit any act or thing that will
degrade her in society, or bring her into public hatred, contempt, scorn, or ridicule, that will tend to shock, insult, or offend the community or ridicule public morals or decency, or prejudice the producer or the motion picture industry in general.’ My God, if we so much as were photographed in a nightclub with a cigarette, the studio would insist that it be airbrushed out.”
Ava Gardner. Ava: My Story (New York: Bantam Books, 1990)
WHAT FICTIONAL CHARACTER HAS APPEARED IN MORE FILMS THAN ANY OTHER?
T.Campbell, editor of Wordplay, has done cosiderable
research to answer the above question. He concludes:
"Looking at this more closely, I see that Sherlock Holmes' record is for film and TV combined. The true record-holder for films only, according to that piece, is Dracula!
Someone really should update these, anyway. I've seen lots of both characters in the years since then, but it's always possible those numbers have changed since 2012. I may have to look into this further.
**
FORREST TUCKER
Forrest Tucker
Sd to this movie star, "Pucker
Up, Babe, I'm going to give you a kiss you'll
Never forget. " The movie star? Francis, the Talking Mule
**
LJP
"I have heard it said that there are only four things
you need to fear in California -- earth, air, fire,
and water."
Alex Stone. Fooling Houdini (New York: HarperCollins, 2012)
THE ORIGIN OF UNCLE SAM
In Troy, NY, "Samuel Wilson and his brother ran a firm
known as E&S Wilson -- they were butchers and meat-packers. 'Samuel not only supplied meat to the military on his own,
he secured an appointment as inspector of beef and pork
for the northern army.'" (see The New York Gazette for
May 12, 1830)
"The casks were marked E.A.-U.S. This work fell to
the lot of a facetious fellow in the employ of messrs.
Wilson, who , on being asked by some of his fellow-workmen
the meaning of the mark (for the letters U.S. for United
States were almost entirely new to them) said that he
did not know unless it meant Elbert Anderson and Uncle Sam -- alluding exclusively then, to the 'Uncle Sam ' Wilson.
The joke took among the workmen....
"In a short time all Government property was being
referred to as Uncle Sam's -- wagons, arms, payrolls
and the like."
Alton Ketcham. Uncle Sam (New York: Hill &Wang, 1959)
**
The smallest U.S. state has the longest name -- "The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantation"
**
ON THE FATE OF THOMAS HICKEY (?-1776)
'Thomas Hickey was a private in the Commander-in-Chief's Guard, a unit formed on March 12, 1776, to protect George Washington, his official papers, and the Continental Army's cash. That spring, Hickey and another soldier were arrested for passing counterfeit money. While incarcerated in Bridewell prison, Hickey revealed to another prisoner, Isaac Ketchum, (possibly overheard by two others, Isaac and Israel Youngs) that he was part of a wider conspiracy of soldiers who were prepared to defect to the British once the expected invasion came.
Arrested by civilian authorities, Hickey was turned over
to the Continental Army for trial. He was court-martialed and found guilty of mutiny and sedition. He was hanged on June 28, 1776, at the corner of Chrystie and Grand Streets before a crowd of 20,000 spectators in New York. "
Wikipedia
**
3 PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES IN A SINGLE YEAR
Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, and
John Tyler were Presidents in 1841.
Rutherford Hayes, James A. Garfield, and
Chester A, Arthur were Presidents in 1881).
**
Wyatt Earp speaks on gunfighting on the frontier
Narration by Steve Berwick
**
"I am willing to love all mankind, except an American."
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
**
TWO JOHN BROWNS
"There was a singing quartet in residence at the fort* : Sgt. Charles Edgerly, Sgt. Newton J. Purnette, Sgt. James Jenkins, and Sgt. John Brown.
" One day, in December of 1859, news arrived at the fort about the famous abolitionist: 'John Brown's dead.' Some
smart-aleck, thinking of his singing comrade, Sgt. John Beown, is said to have replied, ' But he still goes marching around.
' A soldier named Henry Halgreen reportedly turned this wisecrack into the first verse of the song about his
comrade: 'John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the
grave/His soul goes marching on.' A soldier who played
the organ set it to the music of ' Say, Brothers,
Will You Meet Us?'
"So the song was a joke, joshing among soldiers,
the sort of ribbing a sergeant in today's army might
receive if he had the misfortune of being named Uday
Hussein."
*Fort Warren in Boston Harbor. "John Brown's Body
became the 12th regiment's marching song,."
Sean Willentz and Grell Marcus, editors. The Rose &
the Briar: Death, Love and Liberty in the American Ballad
(New York: W.W.Norton & Company, 2004.
**
JOHNNY INKSLINGER ON THE TRAIN BACK FROM GETTYSBURG
REFLECTS UPON THE TERRIBLE RECEPTION OF ABRAHAM
LINCOLN'S SPEECH
Like a soldier's leave,
The world we wake to
Is vague & tremulous.
Pocatello, yes! Gettysburg,No!
More than 4 score and 7 years ago,
Lincoln came to dedicate a battlefield,
A deathscape of disappointments.
The Chicago Times was not impressed:
"An offensive exhibition of boorishness and vulgarity."
Hell, Abe, foolish ape in a stovepipe hat,
I've had worse reviews than that!
Voice high-pitched.
Whatever could be sd
Could not raise the dead. Sad.
And the Times & the times,
As one might say:
"He has outdone himself.He has literally come out
of the little end of his own horn. By the size of
it, Medocrity is superb."
Too brief.
Then the train ride back to more grief.
Louis Phillips
PhillipsMiscellany 