"We all want to be closer to the fire."
William Goldman
**
ANTIMONY IS NOT THE SAME AS ALIMONY(paying alimony
will make any person philosophical)
“Antinomy” is a word for logical paradox or inconsistency closely associated with 18th-century German philosopher
Immanuel Kant. In his book “Critique of Pure Reason,”
Kant introduced a number of logical paradoxes now known
as “Kant’s antinomies” to show how two equally reasonable
ideas could ultimately contradict one another. For example, Kant made a carefully reasoned argument that the universe
and time had a beginning and strict borders, and then
made an equally logical argument concluding the universe
and time were both without beginning or end. The goal of
Kant’s antinomies was to show how reason alone was not
enough to resolve metaphysical problems, because even
the best-reasoned arguments could ultimately arrive at
opposite conclusions.”
From THE WORD GENIUS WEBSITE (Feb. 18, 2023)
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzGrcj
LbSRKZKCgqpPpRRrrBGqKg
**
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant,
For the life of me I can't
Understand his uses of antimony.
Perhaps it means Philosophers don’t make much money,
**
I wonder what chairs think about all day. "Oh, here
comes another asshole."
Robin Williams
**
EINSTEIN ON HOW HE THINKS
"Words do not seem to play any role in my mechanism
of thought. I seem to use more or less clear images
of a visual type, combined with some muscular feeling.
These vaguely play together, combining with each other,
without any logical construction in words and signs
which could be communicated to others. "
Albert Einstein
**
"Three things the wise man does not do. He does not plow the sky. He does not paint pictures on water. And he does not argue with a woman."
CHARLIE CHAN in the novel Keeper of the Key (1932)
**
THREE THINGS ABOVE ALL ELSE
"People in the mid-18th century: climate, government and religion. He was ahead of his time in putting climate first. Peter Frankopan opens his new book with Voltaire's
comment and proceeds to show how all manner of natural
disasters have shaped human history; not just floods and
storms, but earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and crashing meteorites, too."
from an unsigned review of The Earth Transformed by
Peter Frankopan (The Economist, March 11, 2023)
**
THE PRINCIPAL CONCERN OF GOOD CRAFTSMEN
"It seems to me that if you are a good craftsman your
principal concern should be to keep working. If you
manage to do that your employers will have to pay you
sooner or later exactly what you are worth. How could
they avoid it?
Buster Keaton .
Buster Keaton, with Charles Samuels . My Wonderful World of Slapstick (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1960)
**
"First say to yourself what you would be, and then do
what you have to do."
Epicetius. Discourses
**
REAL LIFE IN MANHATTAN
The woman on 111th Street
Shouted into her cellphone
“That’s not the way
Real life works!” Her tone
Was not philosophical,
But I knew on the spot
That she knew something
About Life that I did not.
Louis Phillips
Louis Phillips
--
"A dramatist is one who believes that the pure event,
an action involving human beings, is more arresting
than any comment that can be made upon it."
Thornton Wilder
**
THE VAUDEVILLE ACT –SWAIN’S RAT AND CAT ACT
“In case you are too young to remember this offering,
it consisted of six rats, dressed as jockeys, perched
on six cats, dressed as horses, galloping furiously
around a miniature race track. It was an extraordinary
act.”
Groucho Marx in a letter Sam Zolotow (January 23, 1946).
The Groucho Letters (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1967)
**
ON AN ACTOR IN A PRODUCTION OF INHERIT THE WIND
"One night, as crusading attorney Clarence Darrow,
he strode up to the bench and, instead of saying,
'The court rules out any expert testimony on Charles
Darwin's Origin of Species or Descent of Man, he said,
for some reason 'The court rules out any expert testimony
on Charles Darwin's Design For Living.'"
Mark Steyn. The Spectator (2 October 1999)
**
ON PRODUCERS
"I think producers are the most dangerous people
in the theater; not because of the power they have
over the young writer, but because of the power
they have to choose plays that hurt the theater.
The more bad things they see, the more people decide
to stay away from the theater."
Neil Simon in The Dramatist Guild Quarterly(Spring 1973)
**
AN AMERICAN PLAYWRIGHT MENTIONED IN ANOTHER MAN'S PLAY
Patty: Don't be so darn practical.
Don: Then quit talking like a play by Saroyan.
Patty: I adore him, don't you?
Don: Huh? Who?
Patty: Saroyan.
Don: I can take him or leave him.
from THE MOON IS BLUE by F. Hugh Herbert
**
NO PLAYS IN HEAVEN
"Good God, if these be the chiefe delights of Christians
now, which was the voice, the shame of Pagans, of Christians heretofore, why doe any such voluptuous carnall Christians hope for Heaven? Are there any lascivious Stage-playes, Spectacles, Songs, or such like sinfull vanities there? are there any such lust-fomenting,sin-engendering sports or pastimes in Heaven, as carnalists delight in here on earth? O no, there is no uncleanesse, vanity or lasciviousnesse in that holy place. If men therefore thinke themselves miserable when they are deprived of these pleasures here, what happiness can they hope to finde in Heaven hereafter, where there are no such Enterludes, such carnall contentments as they delight in now."
William Prynne. Histrio-Mastix, 1633
**
WHITE FANGS, or DRACULA ONSTAGE
"It has been stated that Dracula is always being
shown onstage somewhere in the world. This is one
of those convenient statistics that are almost
impossible to refute, but it seems to be true today.
A parody, at the Theatre Royal, Stratford (in
London's East End) was so popular that the season
was extended into 1975. After touring the provinces,
Peter Wyngarde reached Wimbledon in March in the
title role of his own adaptation, which he was
pleased to acknowledge as 'Bram Stoker's Dracula'.
Billed as 'pleasantly frightening', this version
was not sufficiently pleasant, while the most
frightening moment was the apparent 'escape' of
one the white rats from the stage into the audience."
Daniel Farson. The Man Who Wrote Dracula: a biography
of Bram Stoker ( New York: St. Martin's Press, 1975)
**
THE REPERTORY COMPANIES IN WRITERS' HEADS
"Each writer is born with a repertory company
in his head. Shakespeare had perhaps 20 plays,
and Tennessee Williams has about five and Samuel
Beckett -- and perhaps a clone of that one. I
have ten or so, and that's a lot."
Gore Vidal
**
DICTIONARY WRITER NOAH WEBSTER (October 16, 1758 – May 28, 1843) & HIS OPINION ON GOING TO THE THEATER
"Webster was shocked by the spotty observance of the
Sabbath in France. 'the Catholics generally have no
tables, & the Sabbath is a day of amusement for the
rich and the gay. The theaters are open every night,
& one of the greatest inconveniences I experience is
the noise of carriages at the breaking up of plays
about 12 at night.
"Webster scorned the theater. 'Before I can believe
the stage to be a school of virtue, I must demand proof
that a single profligate had ever been reformed or a
single man or woman made Christian by its influence...
I would caution you against the fascination of plays,novels,romances.'''
Harlow Giles Unger. Noah Webster: The Life and Times of an American Patriot (New York: John Wiley & Sons,1998)
**
"Your audience gives you everything you need.
They tell you . There is no director who can
direct you like an audience."
Fanny Brice
**
SOMETIMES ACTING SCHOOLS CAN BE VERY WRONG
"DENHOLM ELLlOTT was a particular favorite with
the British Academy of Film and Television Arts
in the 1980s, when he won the award for Best Actor
in a Supporting Role in three consecutive years,
the only actor ever to have achieved this. But,
when as a young man he attended the Royal Academy
of Dramatic Arts (RADA) he "was asked to leave
after one term. As Elliott later recalled: "They
wrote to my mother and said, 'Much as we like the
little fellow, he's wasting your money and our time.
Take him away!'".
see iDMb trivia--Denholm Elliott
**
THEATER NOTESMOLLY PICON
Molly Picon
Sd "Don't pick on
Me because the play was a flop.
The playwright made the stupid stuff up."
**
MARY MARTIN
Mary Martin
Did not play a tart in
Peter Pan.
She actually played a young man.
WALTER KERR
Theater critic Walter Kerr
Despised care-
less writing & silly falderoo.
Thank God he did not live to see this Clerihew!
**
Louis Phillips
"The three most important words in the English are wait a minute."
Sam Rayburn
**
THE DRINK OF GRIEF
" Weed. Mary Jane. Chronic. There are dozens of slang
synonyms for marijuana. But one of the strangest is
the word pot. How did the word for a common kitchen
instrument become slang for marijuana?
The origin of pot has nothing to do with the culinary
tool. The word came into use in America in the late 1930s.
It is a shortening of the Spanish potiguaya or potaguaya
that came from potación de guaya, a wine or brandy in
which marijuana buds have been steeped. It literally means
“the drink of grief.”
DICTIONARY.COM (April 20, 2023) https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzGsmDtjTwg
ltGlZqQZzmnGVBLSD
**
"When I sell liquor, it's called bootlegging; when
my patrons serve it on silver trays on Lake Shore
Drive, it's called hospitality."
Al Capone
**
ON BEING GYPPED
"The three-card monte probably arrived in Europe by way of gypsies, who fanned out west from the Balkans across the Continent during the fourteenth century , their bindles loaded with clever little takedown games that yielded a profit in the chaos of medieval streets and marketplaces -- hence the word gyp."
Alex Stone. Fooling Houdini. (New York: HarperCollins, 2012)
**
Longest word in the Old Testament:
longest: Mahershalalhashbaz, 18 characters. Maher-shalal-hash-baz was a son of the prophet Isaiah. The name means "speed the spoil, hasten the plunder", and was given at the moment that the king of Assyria was on his way and would soon rob the Syrians (in Damascus) and the Israelites (in Samaria). Isaiah prophetised that that would happen before the boy Mahershalalhashbaz would be able to cry 'mommy' or 'daddy' —
let alone pronounce his own name.
longest words, not name: evilfavouredness and lovingkindnesses, both with 16 characters.
Concordance to the Bible
**
ON THE ORIGIN OF THE GOLF TERM 'BIRDIE'
"The word 'Birdie' was originated by American Ab Smith
when he called his second shot 'a bird of a shot' after
putting it 6 inches from from the par 4 hole in 1899."
Bartlett's World Golf Encyclopedia
**
“There’s a great power in words, if you don’t hitch
too many of them together.”
Josh Billings
**
THE ANSWER IS: JOSH BILLINGS
THE QUESTION IS: How does a person describe payments made
for selling jokes to comedians?
**
ON QUACKERY
“The quack lived by his sales pitch, which combined the gleanings of scientific jargon with the most impudent
medical hokum. The word quack itself (abbreviated from
the original Dutch quacksalver, which means ‘one who
quacks about the virtue of his salve”) and merely an
onomatopoetic attempt at imitating the fast-talking,
juiced up idiom of the trade.”
Richard Conniff in GEO (January 1983)
**
secular/saeculum,
“The English word secular derives from the Latin word
saeculum, meaning ‘the present age’. The history of this
word’s career in Western thought is itself a parable of the degree to which the biblical message has been misunderstood
and misappropriated over the years. Basically saeculum is
one of two Latin words denoting‘world’ foreshadowed serious theological problems since it betrayed a certain dualism
very foreign to the Bible…
Saeculum is a time word ,used frequently to translate the Greek word aeon, which also means age or epoch. Mundus, on
the other hand, is a space word, used more frequently to translate cosmos, meaning the universe or the created order.”
Harvey Cox. The Secular City (Penguin Books, 1966)
**
THE WILD BLUE YONDER?
“My father once asked me if I knew where yonder was? I said I thought yonder was another word for there. He smiled and said, ‘No, yonder is between here and there.’
This little story has stayed with me for years as an example of linguistic magic; it identified a new space – a middle region that was neither here nor there – a place that simply didn’t exist for me until it was given a name.”
Siri Hudstvedt. Yonder (New York:Henry Holt and Company, 1998)
**
yonder (adv.)
"within sight but not near," c. 1300, from Old English geond "throughout, up to, as far as"
Online Etymological Dictiomary
**
THE LIGHT IS ANOTHER LANGUAGE
I have nothing up my sleeve.
In fact, I do not have a sleeve.
This poem conceals nothing,
Has nothing to hide,
Every word is out in the open
Where it can be seen,
Can be seen because light itself
Is another language.
Louis Phillips'
from The Domain of Small Mercies:
New and Selected Poems 2 (1963-
2015)New York: Pleasure Boat
Studio (2017)
**
THE U.S. NAVY & CRIME BOSS LUCKY LUCIANO
"... during World War II, (MEYER) Lansky helped set up
a deal between Luciano (then in prison) and the United
States navy to help guard New York's docks, and weed out possible undercover enemies. In exchange, Luciano was
released from prison and deported back to Italy --
where he was able to resume running his businesses. "
Aria Darcalla. "Risky Business" in Avenue
(January-February 2023)
* Meyer Lansky, known as the "Mob's Accountant", was an American organized crime figure who, along with his associate Charles "Lucky" Luciano, was instrumental in the development of the National Crime Syndicate in the United States. Wikipedia
Charles "Lucky" Luciano was an Italian-born gangster who operated mainly in the United States. Luciano started his criminal career in the Five Points gang and was instrumental in the development of the National Crime Syndicate. Wikipedia
**
PLAYWRIGHT TOM STOPPARD & WALTER WINCHELL VISIT HOT CRIME SPOTS IN NYC
“Asked who he would most like to meet in New York,
(STOPPARD) opted for the legendary journalist’
Walter Winchell, and spent a strange night with
the old man, being driven around in his car, which
still had a siren on it, to crime hotspots in
the city, and being met with some bewilderment ,
who had no idea who Winchell was. “
Hermione Lee. Tom Stoppard: A Life (New York: Alfred
Knopf, 2020
**
CRIMINAL COURT IN 1724
Fara Dabhoiwala finds it strange that’ Julian the Black’ didn’t testify in court when he was tried on a capital charge in 1724 (LRB , 23 June) . It would have been stranger if he had done so, for until the Criminal Evidence Act 1898 was passed , accused individuals tried in England and Wales could not testify in their own defence. They were limited to cross-examining prosecution witnesses and making an unsworn statement, on which they themselves could not be cross-examined from the dock.
“They could, however, call witnesses to give evidence of their good character and reputation, or factual evidence indicative of their innocence – classically an alibi.”
Stephen Sedlet in a letter to London Review of Books
(7 July 2022)
**
MORE ABOUT CRIMINAL TRIALS AT THE OLD
BAILY, CIRCA 1724
“Criminal trials were very brief, often lasting only a few minutes. The same jury would listen to successive unrelated cases, then retire to consider them all, returning the verdicts as a batch. There were no lawyers. The judge acted as examiner of the victim, and any witnesses called on either side…”
Fara Dabhoiwala in a letter to London Review of Books
(24 July 2022)
**
WHY DID WILLIE SUTTON ROB BANKS
“Why did I banks ? Because I enjoyed it. I loved it. I was more alive when I was inside a bank, robbing it, than at any other time in my life. I enjoyed everything about it so much that one or two weeks later I’d be out looking for the next job. But to me the money was the chips, that’s all. The winnings. I kept robbing banks when, by all logic, it was foolish. When it could cost me far more than I could possibly gain.”
Willie Sutton and Edward Linn. Where the Money Was
(New York:The Viking Press, 1976)
**
WITNESS AT A TRIAL
Witness: “No, I didn’t actually see him bite off the guy’s
ear.’
Judge: “What are you presuming to give evidence
about?”
Wittness: “I saw him spit it out.”
From Culture is my Business by Marshall McLuhan
**
THE BIRTH OF MODERN MOB BOSSES IN THE UNITED STATES
"Then there was the pitiless Benjamin Marks, a former Civil War courier who in 1867 at age nineteen, hiked from
Iowa to Wyoming dealing (THREE CARD) monte on a wooden plank slung from his neck. An ancestor of the modern mob boss, Marks built a small empire out of con games and shady business deals. He erected his infamous Elks Grove casino and brothel, remains of which are still standing on the county line, so that dodging police raids was a simple matter of moving to a room in another jurisdiction."
Alex Stone. Fooling Houdini. (New York: HarperCollins, 2012)
**
FRANKIE (SOMETIMES ALBERT) & JOHNNIE
"One Monday morning, October 16, 1899, the readers of the St. Lous Republic saw the following item:
" NEGRO SHOT BY WOMAN"
"After midnight, Sunday, Allen (Albert) Britt, Colored, was shot and badly wounded by Frankie Baker, also Colored. The shooting occurred at the woman's home at 317 Targee Street, after a qusrrel over another woman named Nellie Bly. Britt had been to a Cakewalk at Stolle's Dance Halls, where he and Nellie Bly had won a prize. His condition at City Hospital is serious..."
The above shooting inspired any memorable song, with
many variations. In 1912, the first version of "Frankie and Johnny" was published, but " In 1942, Guy Lombardo used the famous lead line 'Frankie and Johnny were sweethearts' in a version written by Boyd Bouch and Bert Leighton."
Frankie and Johnny were sweethearts.
Oh! What a couple in love;
Frankie was loyal to Johnny
Just as true as stars aboveHe was her man,But he done her wrong.
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.
**
MEMBERS OF AL CAPONE'S GAME
GO FOR A WALK IN CHICAGOON A RAINY DAY
What's the best thing to do with all this rain?
Pistol whip it.
Louis Phillips
ON A WOMAN CROSSING HER LEGS IN MOVIES
"When you make a woman cross her legs in the films,
maybe you don't need to see how high she can cross
them, but how low she can cross them and still be
interesting."
Will H. Hayes, Censorship "Czar of the Movies"
See Current Biography 1943
**
FROM THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (2005) starring Tom Cruise
“When the aliens are investigating the junk in the basement,
one of them plays with a bicycle wheel. This is a reference
to the original book; the main character observes that,with
all the advanced technology the aliens possess, they do
not use any wheels, and wonders if the alien life form had skipped the invention of the wheel.”
IdMb Trivia
**
THERE IS A GENUS OF GIANT SPIDERS NAMED FOR ORSON WELLES
Orson Welles is among the most influential filmmakers of all time, but his impact isn’t confined to the world of cinema and radio. The multihyphenate behind Citizen Kane has even made a splash among biologists — there’s a genus of giant spiders named after him. In total, there are 13 species in the Orsonwelles genus….. Gustavo Hormiga, the arachnologist who discovered them, explained their name thus: “[Welles] was gigantic in a way in terms of moviemaking. These guys are very unique. They’re also very gigantic. So I just said, OK, I'm going to name them Orson Welles.”
Excerpt from INTERESTING FACTS website (November 4, 2020)
**
U.S. POSTAGE STAMPS AND HOLLYWOOD MOVIES
Until sometime in the 40s, films made in the United
States could not show real U.S.postage stamps,so the
major movie studios created their own "movie" stamps.
Here is one example of a stamp used in films:
Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925)
This film had an "extra" cast like no other. Many Hollywood stars showed up on set to watch the shooting and were pressed into service as extras, especially in the chariot race. In addition, many who would later become Hollywood's top stars, but who were at the time just struggling actors, were also in the crowd scenes as extras. Among well-known and soon-to-be-well-known names "working" in the film were John Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, Joan Crawford, Gary Cooper, Marion Davies, Myrna Loy, John Gilbert, Douglas Fairbanks, Clark Gable, Harold Lloyd, Carole Lombard, Janet Gaynor, Fay Wray, Mary Pickford, Colleen Moore, Lillian Gish, Dorothy Gish, Samuel Goldwyn and Rupert Julian.
iDMb Trivia
**
PLAYING LOVE SCENES IN THE MOVIES
“Director Mark Robson observed: ‘You know, there are times when it is advantageous to a love story if the two leading players are not too close: they save their emotions for the cameras. I’ve seen enough instances when co-stars were making it in the dressing room. When they were called on the set a few minutes later, the effect on their performances, particularly in a romantic scene, was disastrous. They were afraid something would come across, especially when one or the other (or both) were married. They subconsciously froze. Take Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. They were madly in love when they did The V.I.P.’s, yet their chemistry in the film was nonexistent.”
Beverly Linet. Susan Hayward: Portrait of a Survivor
(New York: Atheneum, 1980)
**
QUESTION #96543
The famous locomotive song about "The Atchinson, Topeka,
and the Santa Fe" was introduced in what movie starring Judy Garland?
answer below:
**
ABOUT I MARRIED A WITCH (1942)
The movie I Married a Witch, starring Veronica Lake and Frederic March, opened with a scene of witches being buried in 17th Century New England. No England was buried in New England,.
**
JUNE ALLYSON AND FRED ASTAIRE
June Allyson "took up swimming to strengthen her muscles and eventually won a Greater New York City freestyle swimming championship. She also taught herself to dance by watching Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers motion pictures (she reportedly saw The Gay Divorcee eighteen times) and then imitating the dance routines as soon as she got home. While a student at Theodore Roosevelt High School in the Bromx she once announed to her friends that she could dance like Ginger Rogers. When they dared her to try out for a Broadway show she won a place in the chorus line of Sing Out the News in the fall of 1938."
Current Biography 1950.
**
ANSWER TOQUESTION #96543
THE HARVEY GIRLS
THE DIFFICULTY IN CREATING A CLERIHEW
TO REMEMBER PRISCILLA LANE (1915-1995)
Priscilla Lane
(Now if I only had a 2nd line)
Co-starred with Cary Grant in Arsenic and Old Lace.
(Maybe I cd repeat the 2nd line in this place?)
PAUL MUNI
Paul Muni
Earned some money
By acting in the movie Key Largo,
But he wd have made much more had he robbed Wells Fargo.
Louis Phillips
**
BRAM STOKER ,THE AUTHOR OF DRACULA, REVIEWS
A PERFORMANCE OF HAMLET PERFORMED BY HIS DEAR FRIEND -- THE NOTED 19th CENTURY ACTOR HENRY IRVING
"...Irving returned for another season in Dublin, and
Bram was impressed by the growth of his performance:
Hamlet, as Mr. Irving now acts it, is the wild, fitful, irresolute, mystic melancholy prince that we know in the play; but given with a sad, picturesque gracefulness which is the actor's special gift.' But it is fair to say that, so far aa Irving was concerned, Bram's reviews could no longer be described as ' criticism'. His loyalty became so fierce
that he could not bear to hear a word against his friend,
let alone utter one himself."
Daniel Farson. The Man Who Wrote Dracula: a biography of Bram Stoker
**
From filmmaker Nelson Breen
.. . an Olivier recollection of a performance of Hamlet before a supposedly learned audience at Stratford upon Avon: to ascertain whether anyone actually paid attention to the Bard's words, in the middle of the most famous speech of all, "To be or not to be..." Olivier inserted something like the following: "for breakfast I shall have scrambled eggs & bacon." Not a single audience member picked up on it.
**
SHAKESPEARE'S GODSON
Although William Shakespeare was never appointed Poet
Laureate of England, Shakespeare’s godson – Sir William
D’Avenant was named to the post in 1637.
**
MACBETH AND THEATER SUPERSTITIONS
"Many people believe the play is cursed, since so many mishaps have happened in its 400-year history. Legend has it that for the very first performance circa 1606, William Shakespeare himself had to go on as Lady Macbeth because the actor playing the role suddenly died, according to History.com. Another actor was supposedly killed onstage in Amsterdam in the 17th century, when a prop dagger was replaced by a real one. Riots have also plagued the play at times, with the most tragic being a New York production in 1849 when 22 died and more than 100 were injured. As even a mere mention of the title may bring similar disasters, the play that shall not be named is often referred to as "The Scottish Play" or "The Bard's Play" instead. "
from Interesting Facts (February 28, 2023)
**
WHEN TWO SHAKESPEAREAN LOVERS WENT OUT TO DINE
Romeoed
What Juliet.
Anon.
**
**
DORIS KEANE PLAYS JULIET & MISSES THE OPENING
NIGHT'S CURTAIN CALL
"As for the curtain calls at the end of the performance, there were wild yells: 'We want Ellen. We want Quartermaine.' Doris never appeared....She was, in point of fact, rolling about Capulet's tomb in agony. Basil Sydney had neglected to change his real dagger for a trick dagger in the final scene. So when Juliet seized Romeo's
'happy dagger' to stab herself, it was a most unhappy and
painful experience."
Reginald Denham. Stars in My Hair (New York: Crown Publishers, 1958)
**
On Edwin Booth playing Hamlet
"You remember what they used to say about Booth:
that it wasn'tBooth playing Hamlet, but Hamlet
playing Booth."
from "Referred to the Author" -- a short story
by Christopher Morley
**
SHAKESPEAREAN PUN BY THE CARTOONIST RUSSELL HARVEY
If my relatives were in the audience, naked,
they could be my bare badkins,
**
Alfred Lord Tennyson died with a copy of Cymbeline open
in his hand.
**
SAMUEL PEPYS(1633-1703) GOES TO SEE MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM
" To the King's Theatre, where we saw Midsummer Night's Dream, which I had never seen before,
nor shall ever again, for it is the most insipid,
ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life."
Samuel Pepys, from his Diary
**
EVERYDAY, MY ARIEl
Everyday, my Ariel,
I put the world behind me, but it shoot back,
One generation & the next.
Light as sunlight thrushing
As thru the Spanish Cedars flash
Comorants magnific with their hooked beaks,
Always a fitful cornucopia
To take the breath away.
To take the breath away.
I press my life to the jumping dayshine.
What do I demand?
More space? More freedom?
Freedom to do what? Hungering for magic.
I stand on Prospero's isle.
Could I have been so wrong about my life?
Far out on the ocean,
Replenished & green,
One anonymous sailor
Fastens his shrouds.
Louis Phillips
from The Man on Prospero's Isle
“I don’t like to read books. They muss up my mind.”
Henry Ford
**
Lawyer: Do you know anything about the American
Revolution?
Henry Ford: I understand there was one in 1812.
Lawyer: Any other time?
Henry Ford: I don’t know of such thing.
Lawyer: Did you ever hear of Benedict Arnold?
Henry Ford: I have heard his name.
Lawyer: Who was he?
Henry Ford: I have forgotten just who he is. He is
a writer, I think.
**
ON THE ELECTION OF THOMAS JEFFERSON in 1800
“Murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest will
be openly taught and practiced, the air will be
rent with the cries of distress, the soil soaked
with blood, and the nation black with crimes.
Where is the heart that can contemplate such
as scene with horror?”
The New England Courant
**
I'M SORRY I DID NOT TAKE AARON BURR SERIOUSLY
When Aaron Burr
Asked to borr
ow one of my dueling
Pistols, I thought he was fooling.
LJP
**NOAH WEBSTER GOES TO SCHOOL (circa 1772)
"'The instruction in schools was very imperfect,'
Webster explained. 'No geography was studied...no
history was read...no book for reading was used...
Before the revolution & for some years after, no
slates were used in common schools: all writing &
the operations in Arithmetic were on paper. The
teacher wrote the copies & gave the sums in Arithmetic,
few or none of the pupils having any books as a guide.'
"'According to Webster's daughter Emily: 'The nurture
and admonition of the Lord' were almost the only education
he received until his fourteenth year, for secular studies were then confined within very narrow bounds.'"
Harlow Giles Unger. Noah Webster: The Life and Times
of an American Patriot (2000)
**
**
“I never saw an American man walk or stand well;
…they are nearly all hollow chested and round shouldered.”
Francis Trollope (1780-1863)
**
HOW ERIC CLAPTON GOT TURNED ON
TO MUSIC
“ Well, the first thing that rang in my head was
black music – all black records that were R&B or
blues oriented. I remember hearing Sonny Terry
and Browne McGhee, Big Bill Broonzy, Chuck Berry
and Bo Diddley, and notreally knowing anything about
the geography or culture of the music. But for some
reason it did something to me – it resonated. Then I
found out later that they were black;
They were from the deep South and they were American
black men. That started my education.”
GUITAR LEGENDS: CELEBRATING 30 YEARS OF
GUITAR WORLD. Special Collectors Edition, Celebrating
Thirty Years of Guitar World (2010)
**
ABE LINCOLN AND JACK ARMSTRONG’S BROTHER
Jack Armstrong was a wrestler “who had wrestled with
Lincoln. His brother was that Duff Armstrong who had been defended by Lincoln, using an almanac to prove that that the witnesses had misstated the facts when they testified that the moon was at the meridian at the moment that Duff Armstrong struck his victim with a neck yoke and produced his death. If the moon was not at the meridian, but was setting, the witnesses could not have seen the blow struck., or with what it was struck. That was the point of the almanac, which proved the moon was setting.”
Edgar Lee Masters. “Dreiser at Spoon River” in The
Armchair Esquire, edited by Arnold Gingrich and
L. Rust Hills (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Son, 1958)
**
PAUL BUNYAN
"Few creations can match the prowess of Paul Bunyan, the titan of the North Woods who palled around with Babe the Blue Ox and was responsible for the formation of landmarks such as the Grand Canyon and the Great Lakes. For all the obvious hyperbole, the character may have been based on the real-life French Canadian lumberjacks Bon Jean and Fabian Fournier, the latter better known by the workers who traded tales at logging camps in the late 1800s.
Bunyan stories first appeared in print just after the turn of the century, but it was a marketing campaign by the Red River Lumber Company that introduced the behemoth woodsman to the masses during World War I. Collected stories soon appeared in book form, establishing a mythical mainstay that remains larger than life through the monuments in his honor that populate the northern landscape."
from INTERESTING FACTS (April 21, 2023)
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzGsmDvrgtZFczFRJNxpmkdBGPlg
**
LINES ABOUT THE OLD LINE STATE
Maryland is known as both the Old Line State and the Free State. According to some historians, General George Washington bestowed the name "Old Line State" and thereby associated Maryland with its regular line troops, the Maryland Line, who served courageously in many Revolutionary War battles.
Source: Maryland State Archives
(Wisetrivia, April 21, 2023)
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgz
GsmDtkkndjJtJZhHXGXZvFcbKg
**
WAKING UP IN THE MORNINING
THINKING ABOUT BILLY THE KID
Out of the blue it comes to me.
What Pat Garrett sd
About Billy the Kid:
That Billy 'Drank and laughed,
Rode and laughed,
Talked and laughed,
Fought and laughed,
And killed and laughed."
Damn it!
Today's Tuesday,
That's exactly what I want to do."
LJP
Low moments in theatre criticism
When Agatha Christie’s play SPIDER’S WEB opened
at the Savoy Theatre in London (1954), one of
the disgruntled critics told his readers which
character in the play was the murderer!
***
ON LIGHTING DESIGN
“Great lighting onstage has an unplaceable emotional
effect. You feel it in its swelling or ebbing before
you get a chance to think. Sometimes light’s power
is totally belated: I realized how much certain
arrangements of exposure and shadow have touched
me only when, days later, I recover them in memory.”
Vinson Cunningham. “Lighting the Way,” in The
New Yorker (July 4, 2022)
**
IMPROVING KING LEAR: NAHUM TATE IN 1681
“He produced a happy-ending Lear that held
the stage from the late seventeenth until the early
nineteenth century. Even Dr. Johnson found Shakespeare’s
ending almost unendurable (though he retained Shakespeare’s text for his own edition of the plays).In the Tate revision,
the story ends in a way that justice, and especially poetic justice, seems to require: Lear gets his kingdom back and then resigns, and Cordelia marries Edgar, Gloucester’s good son . (JAMES) Shapiro read us some of the fustian Tate: “My Edgar, Oh!” –“Truth and Vertue shall at last succeed,.” Everyone laughed.
David Denby. Great Books (New York: Simon and Schuster,2005)
‘ Lillian Braithwaite, who was playing opposite Coward
in The Vortex at the time was able to get the better
of (JAMES) Agate in an exchange they had some years
later at a theatrical reception. ‘My dear Lillian,
I have long wanted too tell you that in my opinion
you are the second best actress in London,’ said the
then critic of the Sunday Times.
“’Thank you so much,’ replied Miss Braithwaite.
“I shall cherish that –coming from the second
best dramatic critic.’’
Richard Brier. Coward & Company, (London: Robson
Books, 19870.
Dos Passos in the Theatre
Although John Dos Passos is well-known for his work
as a novelist, he also wrote a play – “The Moon is
a Gong.” When his play opened on Broadway in 1926,
Percy Hammond, critic for the New York Herald-Tribune,
wrote:
“(DOS PASSOS) detonated against everything
from garbage to the radio and left us at
the end of his performance deafened and
confused. His play was of the unsettled
type, all delirious and harum-scarum. It’s
screws were loose….”
***
HIGH BUTTON SHOES (1947)
“The plot , as in most musicals, is negligible.
In this case it involved the arrival of a couple
of mountebanks (Phil Silvers and Joey Faye) in
New Brunswick, Nj, where they sell some
underwater real estate and try to fix the 1913
Princeton –Rutgers football game. The scores
of the stage match (Rutgers 40, Princeton 37)
provoked Princeton undergraduates to come to
New York and enliven opening-night festivities
with a prankish picket lines. The actual score
of the 1913 game was Princeton 14, Rutgers 3.”
NEWSWEEK (October 20, 1947)
**
CHEKHOV’S ADVICE
“After the original rehearsals of The Seagull at
the Moscow Art Theatre, Chekhov was approached by
one of the actors who asked him how he should play
his part. Chekhov replied, ‘As well as possible.’”
Stanley Price
PLAYS & PLAYERS (April 1970)
**
REVIEWING THE PLAY HOTEL ALIMONY
“Out of an inherent sense of decency I was tempted
to ignore Hotel Alimony as though it had never
happened. Reviewing it is a dirty job, but someone
has to do it.”
Burns Mantle
**
THE SERIOUS WORK OF THEATER
"I would say that there is something much bigger in
life and death than we have become aware of (or
adequately recorded) in our living and dying. And
further, to compound this shameless romanticism, I
would say that serious theatre is a search for that
something that is not yet successful but is still
going on."
Tennessee Williams. "Forward' to Sweet Bird of
Youth (New York: A Signet Book, 1959)
**
STAND IN or THE NIGHT I KISSED MIRANDA
As stand-in
I read all the parts,
As actors, actresses, & props
Came down with colds
Or called
In sick. No sooner did the news
Arrive but I flew
Down the aisle, prompt-book
In hand & took
My place upon the stage,
1st as savage
Caliban, or Ferdinand
Or Ariel, filling in &
Playing every role in turn,
Clowns, lords, kerns
& gallowglasses were all one
To me. High flown
Rhetoric brooded in the wings,
One scene a king
Mismatched, unbuckled
As lighting men called
Out their cues, then next
Some princess vexed
With love or overeating.
Couplets on my tongue
Timed the scenery into place,
The list of characters passed
Through my lips. I was them all.
If anyone were ill,
I was well, danced & capered,
Cut a jig, kissed & read
For empty seats, an empty
House –“Oh Lord, flee
To Agincourt before it is
Too late.” Alas, alas,
Hero & heroine were cursed,
Yet stood self-assured
Within the light & I
Rode home. Stand-in, fie
Upon it. Oh fie…..]
Louis Phillips
By royal decree, all ships stopping at Alexandria had to surrender any books they were carrying; these books were copied, and the originals (sometimes the copies) were returned to their owners while the copies (sometimes the originals) were kept in the library.
Alberto Manguel. A History of Reading
(Viking Penguin, 1996)
**
EXHIBIT AT THE GROLIER CLUB
"In Our Second Floor Gallery
"To Fight for the Poor with My Pen: Zoe Anderson Norris,
Queen of Bohemia"
March 2 – May 13, 2023
"To Fight for the Poor with My Pen" is the first exhibition to explore the legacy of Gilded Age author and reformer Zoe Anderson Norris (1860-1914). Writer and publisher of the magazine The East Side (bimonthly, 1909-1914), Norris focused on immigrants and outcasts in dire straits, sometimes working undercover to expose issues that still resonate: street peddlers harassed by corrupt policemen, powerful men going unpunished for sexual harassment, and trafficked sex workers pleading for help escaping the streets. Known as a Queen of Bohemia, Norris also founded the Ragged Edge Klub, which met for weekly dinners combining activism and dancing. A few days after completing the last issue of The East Side, which described her recent dream that she would die soon, she suffered fatal heart failure—and her prediction made headlines in newspapers nationwide."
**
…Susan Sontag arranged her books chronologically. She had told The New York Times that it would set her teeth on edge to put Pynchon next to Plato.
Anne Fadiman. Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 10005)
DONALD RANARD ALMOST SELLS HIS RECORD PLAYER TO NELSON ALGREN & SIMONE DeBEAUVOIR
One afternoon, years later, I was driving home from work,
when I happened to hear a story on NPR about Nelson Algren
and his 20-year, on-and-off-again love affair with, of all people, Simone de Beauvoir. Could any two people have seemed less suited for each other? She was the convent-bred, Sorbonne-educated product of a well-to-do French family, a brilliant student who went on to become a feminist icon. He was a tough guy from a working-class family in Chicago who preferred a poker game to a literary salon and low life to high society. (He liked to quote Whitman: “I feel I am of them—I belong to these convicts and prostitutes myself/And henceforth I will not deny them—for how can I deny myself?”) Yet there it was: For all their differences—or because of them?—he’d been the love of her life, and she, his. She wore his ring and called him her husband; he wanted her to live with him. But they couldn’t work out the logistics. She refused to leave France (and perhaps Sartre, her former lover, now her platonic companion); he wouldn’t leave Chicago. Without his beloved losers—drifters and grifters, hustlers and hookers—who would he write about? Things became even more difficult after the FBI, under the petty and vindictive J. Edgar Hoover, took away Algren’s passport because of his refusal to denounce the communist party—he’d once been a member—and his lifelong support for left-wing causes. There was also tension between the two writers: He never wrote about his friends; in her novels, that’s all she wrote about, and he’d been hurt by some of the things she’d written about him.
The affair petered out, but not the love. When she died, she was buried, next to Sartre, with Algren’s ring on her finger. He’d died several years earlier, killed by a heart attack, after exploding in anger at a reporter for asking personal questions about de Beauvoir."
This piece in a slightly more expanded form appeared
originally on https://www.litromagazine.com
Don Ranard is a widely-published essayist, travel & short-story writer his writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, New World Writing Quarterly, The Best Travel Writing, and many other publications.
**
Dear Editors:
Rupert Holmes says he keeps The Maneuver by
Heimlich on his night stand just in case he "chokes
on popcorn in bed." It strikes me that readers who dine
in bed might be inspired by a few companion titles close by:
Good By Mr. Chips by James Hilton
Candy by Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg
Hard Candy by Tennerssee Williams
Licorice Pizza by Santana
The Big Book of Peanuts by Charles Schultz
Wild Strawberries, screenplay by Igmar Bergman
Death by Chocolate by Sally Bernathy
etc.
Add Digest by Reader's to the night stand?
Sincerely,
Louis Phillips
**
AMINA CAIN’S LIST OF FAVORITE TITLES
In her book on writing -- A Horse In Night –
Amina Cain writes that “A good title offers
something acute without being obvious, without
giving something away.”
Her list of titles she is envious of:
Known and Strange Things by Teju Cole
A Breath of Life by Clarice Lispector
2666 by Roberto Bolano
The Middle Notebooks by Nathaniel
Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson
Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsey
Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor
Aug 9 –Fog by Kathryn Scanlan
Aiding and Abetting by Muriel Spark
Ban en Barlieue by Bhanu Kapli
Amina Cain. A Horse at Night: On Writing (St. Louis, MO, 2022)]**
As good as those titles might sound to Amina Cain, for my
taste not one of those ranks with The Loneliest of the Long
Distance Runner or The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.
**
ON THOMAS MANN'S THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN
"...The Magic Mountain announces, right from the outset,
an obsession with time. Asv Hans Castorp (another ingenue protagonist) winds his way up through mountains to the Davos sanatorium to visit his tubercuoar cousin, the space through which his train chuffs starts to take on "the powers we generally ascribe to time." Numerous temporal meditations follow. -- on duration,on persistance, continuity, recurrence."
Tom McCarthy. "Recessional, or the Time of the Hammer" in Typewriters Bombs Jellyfish (New
York: New York Review of Books, 2017)
**
TYPEWRITERS BOMB JELLYFISH
“Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish”
title of a collection of essays by Tom McCarthy
O those crazy writers,
Schmucks with typewriters
As Samuel Goldwyn,
Jack Warner, Harry Cohn
Or some studio head called them,
Cannot be trusted with
QWERTYUIOP
To save their lives.
One minute they are inviting
Invaders from Mars
To destroy our planet,
The next they are on boats
Near the Mariana Trench
Tossing Smiths & Coronas,
Underwoods, Olivettis
Onto transparent heads
Of innocent jellyfish.
Have tarnished knights
Of outdated electric Royals
No shame as they bomb
Jellyfish & small scallops,
Entangling forests of coral
In red & black ribbon?
LJP
NOAH WEBSTER GOES TO SCHOOL IN CONNECTICUT (Circa 1765)
"As at other common schools, the books at Webster's
schools, the books at Webster's school were limited
to a King James Bible, a psalter, a catechism, and
Thomas Dilworth's New Guide to the English Tongue.
First published in London in 1740, Dilworth's was
a beginners' spelling book, syllabarium, and reader
that indoctrinated children in religious dogma. It
sought to save 'poor creatures from the Slavery of
Sin and Satan' by placing the word of God for a
Lantern to our feet and a Light to our Paths." The
word God appeared in every sentence of even the
earliest lessons, with words of only three letters:
No Man may put off the Law of God.
The Way of God is no Ill Way.
My Joy is in God all the Day.
A bad Man is a Foe to God."
Harlow Giles Unger. The Life and Times of Noah Webster:American Patriot (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1998)
**
THE LARGEST SCULPTURE IN THE WORLD, THE SIOUX WARRIOR ON
HIS HORSE -- ON PA SAPA, THE BLACK HILLS OVERLOOKING
CUSTER, SOUTH DAKOTA
"Fifty years of effort on the part of the sculptor
Korczak Ziolkowski and his wife and children have
just begun to nudge the man and his horse out of
what was once Thunderhead Mountain. In the half
century that the Ziolkowski family has worked,
millions of tons of rock have been moved, as they
attempt to create what will be the world's largest
sculpture...
"It is a nice irony that the little town Crazy
Horse has come to brood over is named for his old
adversary George Armstrong Custer --Long Hair,
whose hair had been cut short on the day of his
last battle...."
Larry McMurtry. Crazy Horse (New York:
A Lipper/Viking Book, 1999)
**
"The Crazy Horse Memorial is a mountain monument under construction on privately held land in the Black Hills,
in Custer County, South Dakota, United States. It will
depict the Oglala Lakota warrior Crazy Horse, riding
a horse and pointing to his tribal land. "
Wikipedia
Address: Crazy Horse, SD 57730
Phone: (605) 673-4681
Artist: Korczak Ziolkowski
Construction started: 1948
Architect: Korczak Ziolkowski
Material: Pegmatite
Height: 564′
Dimensions: 564′ 0″ x 640′ 0″
Medium: Granite
https://www.google.com/search?gs_ssp=eJzj4tTP1TcwNjcuNzFgtFIxqLAwNzNKTjYwMEw2NTW3SEmzMqgwTzSytDQyTTU1sEw0SDb3EkkuSqyqVMjILypOVchNzc0vykzMAQCczRSz&q=crazy+horse+memorial&oq=&aqs=chrome.0.46i39i175i199i362j35i39i362j46i39i175i199i362j46i39i362j35i39i362l4.407647406j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
**
\
MARK RUSSELL & A FEW U.S. PRESIDENTS
"Presidents from Eisenhower to Trump caught the flak.
He sang 'Bail to the Chief" for Richard M. Nixon,
urged George H.W. Bush to retire 'to a home for
the chronically preppy,' likened Jimmy Carter's plan
to streamline government to'putting racing stripes
on an arthritic camel, and recalled that first seeing
Ronald Reagan 'in the picture-frame department at
Woolworth's between Gale Storm and Walter Pidgeon."
Robert D. McFadden. "Obituary for Mark Russell."
New York Times (March 31,2023)
**
DOUBLE DACTYL by Neil Hickey
Higgledy piggledy
General Washington
Dallied with Sally and
Mortgaged the farm.
Martha took washing in,
Cursing the day that she
Incomprehensibly
Fell for his charm.
**
He was in love with Sally Fairfax but she was married,
so he married Martha Custis, who was rich.
**
MAMIE PINK & THE PINK PALACE
Mamie Doud Eisenhower loved the color pink throughout
her entire life. The First Lady wore a pink gown to
her husband Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1953 presidential inauguration and used the color liberally in her
White House decorations. The public noticed, nicknaming
the Eisenhower White House “the Pink Palace,” and a
hue known as “Mamie pink” became a national trend.
Source: Retro Renovation"
HISTORY QUIZ (April 1, 2023)
**
WASHINGTON D.C. -The Compromised City
Founded on July 16, 1790, Washington, DC is unique
among American cities because it was established
by the Constitution of the United States to serve
as the nation’s capital. You can read the actual
line at the National Archives. From its beginning,
it has been embroiled in political maneuvering,
sectional conflicts, and issues of race, national
identity, compromise, and, of course, power. Like
many decisions in American history, the location
of the new city was to be a compromise: Alexander
Hamilton and northern states wanted the new federal
government to assume Revolutionary War debts, and
Thomas Jefferson and southern states wanted the
capital placed in a location friendly to slave-holding agricultural interests.
Trivia Scoop (March 29, 2023)
**
CHARLES PORTIS & AMERICANA
Charles Portis --
His novels transport us
Into true Americana --i.e, True Grit.
(A truer verse than this has yet to be writ).
**
DAVY CROCKETT
Parker, Fess --
In the 1950's,children made a big fuss
Over his Davy Crockett & his coonskin cap.
(If you don't believe me, you can look it up.
**
PhillipsMiscellany 