THINKING
  
 "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
  

 
 **
 Men don’t care what’s on TV. They only care 
what else is on TV. 
 Jerry Seinfeld
  
 That is how the mind of a top-flight comedian
 works. My mind when, at odd moments, it 
 thinks does not think like that. Most of the
 time my thoughts are in free fall, the larger
 parachute called ideas rarely opens. For
 example, when I was in college I enjoyed 
thinking about naked women. I still do, but 
now I wonder how different my life would be 
if the Philosophy Department had changed its 
name to THINKING ABOUT NAKED PEOPLE just how 
successful that Major would have been. I cannot 
think of any Student I knew not signing up for 
it. The Chair of the Department would soon be 
paid more than the football coaches. Philosophy 
teachers would be needed by the dozens. Final 
exams would be fun to take, and our nation’s 
low opinion about critical thinking would 
change overnight.
                      LJP
**
  
  
   

  MOVIE WISDOM
 
 "When a man is wrestling a leopard in the middle 
of a pond, he is in no position to run."
  
 Cary Grant's character in the classic screwball 
comedy directed by Howard Hawks --"Bringing Up 
Baby”


**
 I recall going to the Roxy when the Duke Ellington 
band was there, and when the film ended and the 
orchestra rose out of the pit playing “Take the 
A Train," the top of my head blew off. From then 
on, any movie set in New York had me.

  Woody Allen. Apropos of Nothing. 
 --
  **

SCI-FI

 Bruce Weber of The New York Times (December 6, 
2008)  began the obituary of this man with the 
following:

     It’s a common claim that someone is the world’s 
biggest fan of such-and such. Elizabeth Taylor’s 
biggest fan . The biggest fan of the New York’s Jets. 
The world’s Biggest country music fan.  Hardly anyone 
takes such a designation  seriously, except perhaps 
when it comes to _________   ________, whose 
obsessive  devotion to science fiction and horror 
stories was so fierce that he helped propel their
 popularity. Indeed, he was widely credited with 
  coining the term sci-fi.
  
  
 Can you identify the man who coined the term sci-fi?
  
 
 Forrest J Ackerman. According to Bruce Weber:  
“Mr. Ackerman said he came up with ‘sci-fi’ in 
1954. He was driving in a car with his wife 
when he  heard a radio announcer say ‘Hi-fi.’ 
he term, sci-fi just came reflexively and 
unbidden out of his mouth.
   **
 
  
THE POLITICAL SCIENCE FINAL EXAM
 
 Please answer the essay question in the blue 
book provided. 
 
  In October 2020, Televangelist Pat Robertson 
announced that  God told him that Donald Trump
 would win the Presidential election.  Why did
 God lie to Pat Robertson? 

**

Dear Editors:

  I beg to differ with the New York Times headline
 that refers to Marjorie Taylor Greene's destructive fantasies as "remarks". Gertrude Stein remarked
 that  "Remarks are not literature," but hate speech 
is not a casual remark. Free speech is one issue
so many Trump-driven supporters do not understand. 
calling for Nancy Pelosi to be killed or accusing 
Jewish persons of starting forest fires with lasers 
from a distant planet is the equivalent to yelling 
"fire" in a crowded theater. Using "free speech" 
as a catch-all to spread false narratives and to
express disdain for truth and scientific fact 
creates a poisonous environment that kills freedom, 
drains the oxygen from the air that true speech 
needs to thrive in. Not all speech is equal,
nor is all speech free. Words can kill.  

Sincerely,

Louis Phillips


**
AS IF ONE COULD LIVE ON LIGHT ALONE
  
 The moon with its bad eye
 Is a midnight feast.
 Why are so many of us 
 Dining at the wrong table? 
**

Preview(opens in a new tab)

Thus, I refute all those critics who say I do not know anything! I

knew how to fill out my own report card for my parents to sign.

T-SHIRT MESSAGES #2  
 
 
 The proper term for
 senior women should be
    Queen-Agers
  
  
   Send a text
 When you arrive
 No need to knock and
 Get the dog involved 
  
  
         I’m not arguing
   I’m explaining why I’m right
  
  
     I  have red hair because
        God knew I needed
           A warning label
  
      Bigfoot saw me, but
     Nobody believes him
  
  
       I sometimes wonder
        what happened to
      people who have asked
         me for directions
  
         Thou shalt not get
            on my nerves.
                 Mood 24-7 
** 
  
  
 
 “If we behave like those on the other side, 
then we are the other side. Instead of changing 
the world, all we’ll achieve is a reflection of 
the one we want to destroy.”
                              Jean Genet
 **


CREDIT CARDS
  
     …the term credit card…was coined by the visionary 
Edward Bellamy, in his popular utopian novel Looking Backward:2000 to 1887, published in 1888. In Looking 
Backward a young man falls unconscious and wakes up 
at the millennium to an ideal world where cash has 
been replaced by ‘a credit corresponding to his share 
of the annual product of the nation…and a credit card 
is issued to him with which to procure at the public storehouse…whatever he desires, whenever he desires it,’
  
 Nancy Shepherdan. “Credit Card America” 
in American Heritage,  vol. 42 (November 1991),
   
 
 
  COURT SAYS PROTESTERS MAY NOT BURN CREDIT CARDS
  
  
       Because many Americans living in the Dominican Republic are  spending so much time outdoors at 
the beaches or sipping pina coladas at numerous 
restaurants and bars, many  tourists and ex-pats 
may have missed one of the most important news items of the past year.
        Late in 2020, the ideal of Freedom of Speech 
and the First Amendment suffered severe setbacks when 
the Supreme Court ruled, in a 6-3 decision, that, 
although it is now lawful to burn the American Flag, 
it is not legal for an American Citizen to burn his 
or her credit card. This 6-3 decision, one of the more controversial in Supreme Court history, has the 
effect of declaring unconstitutional the Credit Card Desecration Laws of the original 13 Colonies and 5 multinational Corporations  Until today it has been l
egal for a person to destroy his or her credit 
cards and unpaid bills.
   In the Majority Decision, Clarence Thomas  
wrote: "For decades it has been a crime to 
desecrate, mutilate, and/or willfully destroy 
American money. Credit cards obviously represent 
new money. Once credit cards burn who knows how 
the American Economy will suffer. What will be 
next? Melting down Fort Knox?"
    The ruling came in the case of EXXON VS. 
ROE, when John Jay Roe, protesting recent oil 
spills in Beverly Hills swimming pools, cut 
his Exxon card in half and returned it to 
the company. The oil company, sensing a 
environmentalist revolt upon its hands, 
immediately brought suit. The case has 
   Lawyers on Roe's behalf argued that since 
the Court had approved the burning of the 
flag (ruling no. 88-l55) that the same 
principles should 
 apply to the cutting, burning, and tearing of credit 
cards. "Not so," claimed Chief Justice John Rogers 
in filing the minority report . "The flag is a 
ymbol. Credit cards and dollar bills are not symbols. 
They are the real thing. " 
      The Trump White House, however,  reiterated 
the ex-Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist's 
statement at the time of the flag burning decision:
 "Surely one of the high purposes of a democratic 
society is to legislate against conduct that is 
regarded as evil and profoundly offensive to the 
majority of people..."  Certainly, the majority 
decision explained, nothing can be more offensive 
than watching a prospective customer and/or debtor 
destroying his or her buying power. The burning 
of paper money and credit cards threatens the very underpinnings of Capitalism.
      Response to the decision was , as might be 
expected, sharply divided. A. Koorp, President of 
Let's Give More Credit to Americans, hailed the 
ruling as "A victory for the American Dream. 
Everything America stands for has been vindicated." 
      On the other hand, Ms. B. Fritchie of 
Whittier, California, leader of  Project Poverty 
said:   "It does not help to heal the wounds of 
America by declaring that money and credit cards a
re more important than our Flag."
   Still left undecided is the question of 
whether the destroying of carbon  copies of credit 
card bills in restaurants is protection against 
fraud or symbolic desecration of the card itself.
       ***
  
  
 
 
 
 THE APPLE SAUCE  CHRONICLES TRY SOCIAL 
DISTANCING THEMSELVES FROM THEIR AUTHOR
 
 Fairly original wordplay by Louis Phillips
 *

  
 JECBUST –Change of subject.
  
 **
  
     Charles Portis --
     His novels transport us
     Into true Americana --i.e,ˆTrue Grit."
     (A truer verse than this 
                       has yet to be writ).
  
 ** 
  
 What’s the difference between a Rattus
 norvegicus) and the mountain Noah’s Ark
 Landed on?
  
 One is a rat, the other is Ararat.
 **
  
 ENCOUNT  -- a brief encounter
 OF – shaved off
  
  
  
  
 What is the difference between MA and a 
 Catholic service?
  
 One is half MASS, the other a full mass.
 
 **
  
  
 Ned Rorem,
 All by himself was a quorem.
  
 **
  
 SEX SURVEY
  
  Dating?
  Mating?
  Rating ?
  
 **

CHEAT AT AN INSULT GAME ON OUR
SCHOOLS' PLAYGROUNDS
'
Hinky Pinky
Hanky Panky
&&
  
  
  
 TARZEN – achieving nirvana while swinging tree to tree on a vine.
 **
  
  
 THE ANSWER: Lex Barker
  
 THE QUESTION: what do you call a person 
who sells dictionaries at carnivals & fairs?
  
 Lex Barker also portrayed Tarzan in movies. 
   
 
 PALINDROME:
  
 Telegram from a noted botanist
  
 SUE ANN ILL LINNAEUS
  
 **
  
 BRIEF REVIEW OF ODYSSEUS’S ENCOUNTER 
WITH THE CYCLOPS
  
 There’s more here than meets the eye.
   **
  
 G.O.P. –GREED OVER PRINCIPLES
  
 **
  
 FOR THE NEXT GENERATION
 OF MOVIE-GOERS
  
 Howard Keel,
 In reel after reel,
 Sang his heart out.
 (Young people have no idea 
       what I’m talking about.) 
 
21st CENTURY POEM OF PRAISE
 
 ;^)) ;^)) ;^)) ;^))
 ;^)) ;^)) ;^)) ;^))
 ;^)) ;^)) ;^)) ;^))
 ;^)) ;^)) ;^)) ;^))
 ;^)) ;^)) ;^)) ;^))
 ;^)) ;^)) ;^)) ;^))
 ;^)) ;^)) ;^)) ;^))
  **]]
  **

 Dear Editors:
 

 William Giraldi opens his review of Why I Read 
by asserting that "For writers literature is a 
talent show. Those with the most talent win." 
But what do the most talented win? Win readers? 
Sometimes.But the books that attract the most 
readers frequently are not written by the most 
talented. Win prizes? Sometimes.But for every 
prize given to a "best" book there are numerous 
non-winning books  just as deserving of prizes. 
Million dollar contracts? Sometimes, but not 
always to the most talented. Prizes and money 
are useful to further a career and to buy more 
time to write. Not much else.How many Pulitzer
Prize winning authors are no longer read?
     Nor dp I believe that when it comes to 
readers that "everybody wins" ( Giraldi's 
third sentence). Readers who read books 
that tell lies, spread propaganda, and are 
not as true as the writer can make them, even 
in fiction. are definitely losing.
     Write what you like, the way you like it, 
to the best of your ability.Try not to shame your 
craft.  If that's not winning,, I no longer know 
what winning as a writer means.
 

 Sincerely,
Louis Phillips

             
                             
  
  
   

Thou shalt not get /
On my nerves/ mood 24:7

THE FOUR HORSEMAN OF NOTRE DAME

 The Four Horsemen of Notre Dame comprised a group 
of American football players at the University 
of Notre Dame under coach Knute Rockne. They were the backfield of Notre Dame's 1924 football team. 
The players that made up this group were Harry Stuhldreher, Don Miller, Jim Crowley, and Elmer 
Layden.[1]
  In 1924, a nickname coined by sportswriter 
Grantland Rice and the actions of a student 
publicity aide transformed the Notre Dame 
backfield of Stuhldreher, Crowley, Miller, and 
Layden into one of the most noted groups of 
collegiate athletes in football history, 
the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame.[

    from Wikipedia
 
 
 FOOTBALL
  
  Blocking is  something you have to make 
yourself do. Catching is natural; but it 
isn’t natural for a civilized man to run 
around hitting people. Besides, it hurts.
  
    Lance Alworth
  
  
If a man watches three football games 
in a row, he should be declared 
legally dead.
  
       Emma Bomback
 
  
Football is not a contact sport. It’s 
a collision sport. Dancing is a 
good example of a contact sport.
  
                      Duffy Daugherty
  
  
 Football –a sport that bears the same relation 
to education that bullfighting does to 
agriculture.
  
    Elbert Hubbard
  
  
  
 I love to hit people, and I admit it – blockers
 as well as ball carriers. Defensive football 
players are innate hitters. It’s a joy to me. 
I tell people it’s how I work off my daily 
hostilities. During the week I’m as gentle as 
anybody. Sunday is my time to hit.
  
 Dave Robinson. Green Bay Packers’ player/ (1969)
  
 Asking about the secret to the (ALABAMA’S) 
Tide’s success is like asking an elephant 
for his secret of squashing bugs. They have 
the best coach and the players. There is no 
second sentence.
  
 Michael Rosenberg. Sports Illustrated 
(October 20,2017)
  
  
  He (BUNNY LARKIN)  would line up all the 
candidates for the Carlisle football team, 
show them a football, and in a few words he 
would explain to them how the game was to be 
played. Said Bully Larkin: “When  white man 
has ball get him. When Indian has the ball, 
knock down white man.”
  
 Bill Stern. Bill Stern’s Favorite Football Stories.
  
“I have two weapons. My legs, my arms, 
and my brains.”
  
      Michael Vick (Atlanta Falcons 
Quarterback, 2006)
  
 If you’re going to be a champion, you 
must be willing to pay a greater price 
than your opponent 
will ever pay.
  
 Bud Wilkinson
  
**
FAIRS

I saw at Southwark, at St. Margaret’s Faire, 
monkies and asses dance and do other feats 
of activity on a rope; they were gallantly 
clad a la mode, went upright, saluted the 
company, bowing and pulling off their hats;
 they saluted one another with as good a 
grace as if instructed by a dancing master. 
They turned heels over heads with a basket 
having eggs in it, without breaking any; 
also with lighted candles in their hands 
and on their heads without extinguishing 
them, and with vessels of water, without 
spilling a drop. I also saw an Italian 
wench dance and perform all tricks on ye 
tight rope to admiration; all the court 
went to see her.
  
 John Evelyn, in his diary (September 11, 1660)
  
  
 To Southwark Fair, very dirty, and there 
saw…Jacob Hall’s dancing on the rope, 
where I saw such action as I never saw 
before, and mightily worth seeing…
  
 Samuel Pepys, in his diary 
(September 21,1668)
    ***
 
To THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW 
 Dear Editors:
     Although I love some books much more than 
some people, I believe I was not the only Book 
Review reader who was shocked by Geoff Dyer's 
confession to his wife that he'll "just never 
love another human being as much as I love my books.'
 Does he have children?
      I do believe,however, that Mr. Dyer 
dislikes change. Human beings change; books do not. 
Our perceptions, rereadings, and interpretations 
of books change. Don Quixote is one book for a 
college-age student. It will be a completely 
different book when read by that same student 
some 40 years later.
       Dyer and I may also share a sense of 
disappointment that Dante did not create a 
special circle of Hell for persons who borrow 
books but do not return them.
  
 Sincerely,
 Louis Phillips

   **

 Long live the circus with its sandy ring, its 
prideless palfreys, its jovial clowns, its 
gracefulness, its robustness, its mockery, 
its rides, its mimicry, its trapeze at the top, 
its carpet at the bottom, its somersault, its 
gibberish, its acrobatic prowess and the mystery 
of its morals.     
               Le Couriere francais     
  

ON AUTOGRAPHS & H.ALLEN SMITH AT 
PARAMOUNT PICTURES

"Smith found other ways to amuse
himself during his stay with us.
He spent one afternoon at the 
studio's main gate with an autograph
book and a pen. Each time one of our
stars passed in and out he'd approach
the performer, open the book,
write his own autograph, tear out the
sheet, hand it over, and say, "There
you are. Thanks very much for asking."

B.G. DeSylva in his introduction to
Lost in the Wild Horse Latitudes
by H.Allen Smith (NY:Doubleday, Doran &
Company,1944)
**


 AUTOGRAPH HUNTING
  
     Autograph hunting is the most 
unattractive manifestation of sex-starved 
curiosity.

 Sir Laurence Olivier
  
   

 
 
 
 ACADEMY AWARDS
  
 …the Dorset coast – or, as it is occasionally 
and inadequately known, the Jurassic Coast. 
The crumbing cliffs along it, dating from 
the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods, 
are a happy hunting ground for anyone seeking 
the fossilized remains of ancient creatures. 
The nearest American equivalent would be the 
Academy Awards
  
 Anthony Lake , reviewing Ammonite in
 The New Yorker (November 16, 2020)
    
 **
 BEATLES (THE)  
  
     When reporters at their first press 
conference asked the cheeky Brits to sing 
a song, John Lennon set them straight: 
“We need money first.”  
   Time. Visions of the 1960s. 

  

i
POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
 
The three towering geniuses of European culture, 
Shakespeare, Mozart and Leonardo Di Vinci, were 
not allowed to  appear on the euro note as they 
might, in their separate ways , cause offense; 
mozart because he was a “womanizer”, Shakespeare, 
because he wrote The Merchant of Venice, a play 
judged to be anti-semitic, and Leonardo because 
he was reported to fancy boys. Now the euro note 
carries a picture of a rather dull bridge.
 
John Mortimer,  Where There’s a Will
 
 
POLITICAL THOUGHT
 
From the Renaissance to the eighteenth century,
The impulse behind classic works of political 
thought was the urge to shape events. Machiavelli 
wrote to rescue Florence and Italy from internal 
corruption and external weakness.
Jean Bodin designed a theory of sovereignty that 
might rescue France from its wars of religion. 
The Marian exile of the mid-sixteenth century, 
and John Locke under Charles II, devised 
justification for resistance to prevent tyranny.
 
Blair Worden in TLS (August 4,2006)
 
 
 
POLITICIANS/POLITICS
 
 
No matter how paranoid you are, what the 
government is actually doing is worse than 
you can imagine.
        William Blum
 
Don’t believe anything until it’s been 
officially denied.
         William Blum
 
 
People used to complain that selling a president 
was like selling a bar of soap. But when you buy 
soap, at least you get the soap. In this campaign 
you just get two guys telling you that they really 
value cleanliness.
 
David Brooks

LIGHT VERSE POET BRUCE NEWLING WRITES ABOUT

SOON-TO-BE- EX-PRESIDENT TRUMP

    
           President Trump Delivers His State of
             The Union Address,February 4,2020
    
                   He stood below the Speaker's chair,
                   With golfer's  tan and flaxen hair
                   Entirely his, with no toupee
                   And all with very little gray.
                   Given his looks belie his years,
                   What does he have between his ears?
                   What is this man? All huff and puff?
                   Or is he made of sterner stuff?
                   Is he a steak?  Is he a ham?
                   Might he be mutton dressed as lamb?
                   A statesman?  No; as that, he fails;
                   He's one whose trolley's off its rails. 
                   But showman? Yes;he made his points.
                   Most notably, he self-anoints
                   And,as his Congress claque applauds,
                   Adds to his string of self-awards.
       
                   Stromboli-like, Pelosi fumed;
                   Her copy of his speech was doomed.
                   She clutched it with a raptor's grip--
                   Oh,rapture! Yes, I heard it rip.
                   Glancing,nauseous, through her copy,
                   It's no wonder she got stroppy.
                   
                   It seems the copy--every page--                      Then wound up in her parrot's cage,
                   Or so her housemaid said, when pressed.
                   This is recycling at its best.
                   The sheets, bespattered, I daresay
                   Will be collectibles one day;
                   And maybe once Trump's on the skids,
                   It will be time to call for bids.
                   "Chump Impeached by Champ Pelosi"--
                    Give the champ a gorgeous posy.
                  
                              The   Coda 
        
                    Tempting fate trough self-seduction,
                    Trump promotes his own destruction.
                    When that will be, God only knows:
                    Nemesis comes on tippy-toes.
                                                        
                 Copyright   (c) 2020 Bruce E. Newling
     
    
    
    
    
    
    
   OUR VICE PRESIDENT
    
   Mike Pence
   Knows from whence
   All Presidential power flows,
   Hence, the brown upon his nose.
    
    
   Louis Phillips
   **
       
   
      
  
  
  
  
  
  
 The 14th Amendment, Section 3:
  
  
  
 No person shall be a Senator or Representative 
in Congress, or elector of President and Vice 
President, or hold any office, civil or military, 
under the United States, or under any State,who, 
having previously taken an oath, as a member of 
Congress, or as an officer of the United States, 
or as a member of any State legislature,or as an 
executive or judicial officer of any State, to 
support the Constitution of the United States, 
shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion 
against the same, or given aid or comfort to the 
enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of 
two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
   **

IMAGE CIRCULATED FROM AN UNKNOWN SOURCE ON THE INTERNET

Preview(opens in a new tab)

**

 .
 The hero of  The Man in the Moon, a novel written in the late 1620s by the Anglican bishop Francis Godwin, is carried to the moon in a sky chariot pulled by a flock of wild swans. He spends the next few months among the peaceful ‘Lunars” and gains a measure of fluency in their language, ‘which consisteth not so much of words and letters’ as of melodies ‘that no letters can expresse’.
  
 Nick Richardson, “We’re Not Talking toYou, We’re Talking to Saturn” in London Review of’
 Books (18 June 2020)
  
  
 A provocative theory among physicists and philosophers suggests that humans aren’t experiencing and haven’t experienced reality.
   What we understand as reality, the theory proposes, may merely be one of an astronomical number of vivid computer simulations of an ancient past , designed by humanity’s distant descendants to study the evolution of their forbears. If so, the United States of America is about as real as, say the Mushroom Kingdom  in an unattended game of Super Mario Bros.
  
 Caity Weaver. “The Reality Behind ‘Below Deck” The New York Times (July 2, 2020).
  **
 
 T-SHIRT MESSAGES
  
 I want the job 
   where I push 
 scared sky-drivers
    out of planes.
  
 **
 Today I will 
 Be as useless
 As the “G” in
  LASAGNA
  
 **
  I survived
    The 60’s
    Twice!
  
 **
  
  
 I don’t snore
 I dream
 I am a
 Mototcycle
 **
  
 If I can’t fix it
 It must not be broken
 **
  
  
    
   If only
   Sarcasm
   Burned
   Calories
  
 **
   
  RETIRED
 I worked my whole
   life for this shirt.
  
 **
  
       LIKE  MOST WEBSITES
       I USE COOKIES
       TO IMPROVE MY
       PERFORMANCE
  
 **
  
       THE CHAINS ON
     MY MOOD SWING
        JUST SNAPPED
           RUN.
  
 **
   
 I LOVE COOKING
 WITH WINE 
 Sometimes I even put it in the food
 **
  
 MY BUCKET LIST
 1. Beer
 2.  Ice
 **
  
 THE EARTH’S 
    ROTATION
 HAS MADE
    MY DAY
 **
  
 
 
 NOTE TO THE READER
  
 All right, I know that more than a few of the questions in the various La Triviata quizzes  are unfair and often impossible for many readers, to answer. But the point of a quiz is not to test intelligence or even cultural and verbal awareness. Not by a long shot. The point is to have fun, to pass some time pleasantly while picking up tidbits of useful and useless information. I hope it’s a good party game or a good quiz to share with a friend or two. Actually I hope it is just a good quiz. And sometimes a useful one. If you get 6 correct you are doing very good. If you get 9 or more correct you are in the Genius
 Category.
  
 —LJP
 
 
  
  
 1l Bees can see all colors except one. What color
 cannot be seen by bees?
  
 2.What is the only seven letter word in the English
 language that contains all 5 vowels?
  
 3. It has been claimed that the logo depicting a large
 tongue protruding from a mouth is the most famous
 logo in Rock & Roll history. It is the logo of what group?
  
  
 4. What were the names of the famous NBC newscasters
 who signed off each broadcast with:
        “ Good night, David.”
        “ Good night, Chet.”
  
 5. What does a kinologist study?
  
 6 In the Olympics Discus throw competition how much
 does the discus weigh?
  
 7.Fur is one of the official languages of what African
   country?
  
  

  
 8. In 1984, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences
    established the Television Hall of Fame and inducted
     seven people. Can you name any 3 persons of the
     first seven inductees?
  
 9. A bit of IdMb trivia for this film, directed by John
 Ford and starring John Wayne as Captain Brittles
 Reveals that the regiment's blacksmith, named "Wagner" (Mickey Simpson), is seen at work, we can hear the orchestra playing the "Nibelung"-motif from Richard Wagner's famous opera, "Siegfried". In the opera the motif is connected with the forging of Siegfried's sword. What is the film?
  
 10. Ithaca and Kerykara are Greek islands in what sea?
  
 11.On November 25, 1864 the Winter Garden Theater
 in NYC presented a production of Julius Caesar. Junius
 Brutus Booth played Cassius and his brother Edwin Booth played Brutus. What part did the third brother—John Wilkes Booth – play?
  
 12. In the U.S. Presidential election of 1920 one of
 the major candidates on the ballot was a prisoner
 in a Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia . Who
 was he?
 
 
 13. What country has the oldest flag in the world?
 
 14. How many eyes does a scallop have?
  
      A. none
      B. 30
      C. 50
      D. 100
  
 15. What do the following all have in common?
  
  Mr. R. Nixon,  Phunky, Ty Kong, Wopsle, Squod
 Nobs, and Hookem?
 
 16. What U.S. President is associated with this
 piece of advice: “Speak softly, but carry a big stick.”
  
  
  
 17. What U.S. President gave Maxwell House Coffee
 its famous advertising slogan “Good to the Last Drop”?
 
 18. Edson Arantes do Nascimento is better known to
    the world by what single name? 
  
 19. Richard Strauss was, of course, a famous German
 composer and conductor, but what does his last name
 mean?
  
 20. What is paronomasia?
  
 
 
 
 ANSWERS
  
 1. Red (Do not ask me how scientists know such things)
  
 2. Sequoia
  
 3. The Rolling Stones
  
 4. David Brinkley and Chet Huntley
  
 5. A kinologist studies physics laws of motion 
  
 6. 4 pounds
  
 7. Dafur
  
 8. Lucille Ball, Milton Berle, Paddy Chayesky, Norman Lear, Edward R. Murrow,  William S. Paley, David Sarnoff
  
 9. She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
  
 10. The Ionian Sea
  
 11. He played Marc Anthony
  
 12.  Eugene Debs. He ran as a socialist candidate and
   received nearly one million votes.
  
 13. Denmark
  
 14.( D) 100
  
 15. They are names of characters  in works by Charles
       Dickens
  
 16. Theodore Roosevelt
  
 17.  Theodore Roosevelt.  According to The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations, Roosevelt uttered
 that phrase to Joel Cheek in 1907.
  
 18. Pele’, the great Brazilian soccer player
  
 19. According to Wikipedia , Strauss is a German: nickname for an awkward or belligerent person, from Middle High German struz 'quarrel', 'complaint'. ... Dutch: from a Germanic personal name, Strusso.
  
 20. According to the online Merriam Webster Dictionary, paronomasia was first used in 1571. It is from Latin, from Greek, from paronomazein to call with a slight change of name, from para- + onoma name — more at NAME. It is simply a long word meaning a pun or play on words.
  
  **
 
 
 POEM INSPIRED BY THE CONCLUSION
 TO  JANE EYRE, DEDICATED TO SOMEONE
 WITH A BAD MEMORY
 
 Reader, I married you.
  
  
 Louis Phillips 
     
  
  
  
   

UNTITLED -- reprinted from SENTENCED by Louis Phillips 
(World Audience Books) Available from Amazon


“I think a good title is obliged to exist at a more primitive 
level than clear exposition can provide.” Norman Mailer
 
      Titles! Without titles, how would we be able to identify 
the books we are reading or wish to read? Titles are to 
authors what naming babies are to parents. And sometimes 
what a problem choosing a title or a name is. I wonder –-
 what did Homer call his  epic poems? Did he originally call 
The Iliad  something catchy, such as  War and No Peace? 
Or was it simply known as  Homer’s Epic?
  Forgive me. I am merely wondering out loud what might 
have been  the first literary Work to bear a title? No matter 
the answer to that question it cannot be denied that giving 
a title to one’s artistic efforts  can be serious business indeed.
   Case in point:  On March 23, 1967, Norman Mailer wrote 
a letter to Walter Minton of Putnam’s Publishing House 
in which the author  defends the choice of a title for 
his book –--Why We Are in Vietnam:
  
I think the title will end up working for us. The blurb can 
start out  right away by saying, “Everyone who hears the 
title thinks that Norman Mailer a political article or a novel 
about Vietnam, but as you will soon discover, Vietnam is 
mentioned only once in the book, and then on the last page. 
Why then the title?   
The author doesn’t say, but one can assume that in this 
scandalous, ribald, hilarious and frightening account of a 
hunting expedition in the Brooks Mountain Range in Alaska 
etc., etc., Norman Mailer is saying, ‘This perhaps is what we 
Americans are like, and this may be one of the reasons we’re 
engaged in such a war.’ Perhaps Mailer is even drawing some 
parallels between the hunting down of animals and…but forget 
about the title, this book is going to knock you on your ass.
 
(see THE SELECTED LETTERS OF NORMAN MAILER, 
edited by J. Michael Lennon Random House, 2014
 
I find that one of the more revealing passages about how
 much weight some titles can bear.
 
     Playwrights too have struggled to express their
 understanding of their own works through the choice
 of a title that might also attract an audience. On March
 11, 2015, Erik Piepenburg wrote an article for the
 New York Times - What I Almost Called My Play: 
 Writers on the  Titles They Didn’t Use. In that article,
 Bathesheba Dawn  explained why she abandoned
 her original title “What  Is Not”:
 
 
I was in the middle of writing the play and I was at a 
gala. I sat next to this lovely lady who said the play 
“Bad Jews” sold out in previews. I never considered 
the idea of a title as a marketing tool, ever. I said, 
“I’m working on a new play and it’s called ‘What Is Not.’ ” 
She held up her hand in front of my face and said: 
“No, don’t do it to yourself! You cannot call your play 
that.” I went to bed and woke up and I turned to my wife 
and said, “I’m going to call it “Love & Sex.” I called 
a friend whom I trust, and she said “ ‘Love & Sex’ is a 
magenta title, but there is nothing magenta a
bout your writing. Your writing is very green, and 
‘The Mystery of Love & Sex’ is dark green.” I never 
doubted it after she said that.
 
 I wonder if Shakespeare did much soul searching 
when it cameto titling his plays for presentation at 
the Globe Theater. Titles such  as Hamlet, Othello, 
and King Lear seem very forthright.Nothing fancy 
there. Playwright Sarah Ruhl has noticed that
 
    Tragedy is often named for the tragic person –
King Lear, Hamlet, Julius Caesar – Whereas comedies 
draw from the world at large -–As you Like It, The 
Comedy of Errors, A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
 Tragedy has proper nouns, and comedy has regular 
old nouns that signify the world and the structure of
 the world over and above the  individual.
 
(Sarah Ruhl. 100 Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write,
 (Faberand Faber, Inc. 2014)
 
   Perhaps it is also worth noting that comedies, 
because they provide us with a double vision of 
the human situation  –-the discrepancy between 
what we aspire to be and what we 
truly are – sometimes   carry subtitles: Twelfth Night, or  
What You Will.
 
 Of course, authors can be passionate about their titles
 choices, but publishers and financial considerations about
 sales often have a say in the matter. Many readers of  The
Great Gatsby, of course, are familiar with the fact that F.
 Scott Fitzgerald originally  considered calling it Trimalchio
 in West Egg, one title among several that passed through
 his head. It may seem  obvious now that any book called
Trimalchio  in West Egg will not sell very well.
 
Unfortunately, The Great Gatsby didn’t too much for sales
 either. Frequently Fitzgerald would steal into bookstores
 to purchase copies of his own book to improve his  sales’
 record.
 
          Here are a few other original titles for well-known
books (most, I think, for the better):
 
         Twilight – The Sound and the Fury
         The Chronic Argonaut – The Time Machine
         The Sea-Cook – Treasure Island
          Tomorrow is Another Day – Gone With the Wind
          First Impressions --       Pride and Prejudice
          The Village Virus – Main Street
 
       And so on.* Such lists merely show how important 
revising and rewriting and rethinking are. Sometimes  
titles have to be changed because of the pressure of 
current events.  In 2010,


It’s because of Frank Sinatra that we use the phrase 
“Catch-22” today. Well, sort of. Author Joseph Heller 
tried out Catch-11, but because the original Ocean’s 
Eleven movie was newly in theaters, it was scrapped 
to avoid confusion. He also wanted Catch-18, but, again, 
a recent publication made him switch titles
 to avoid confusion: Leon Uris’ Mila 18. The number 22 
was finally chosen because it was 11 doubled.
 
The Book of Lists 2 gives a slightly different version of
 the above story of origin, and James Campbell,
 reviewing Gary Dexter’s Why Not Catch-21? For TLS
 (September 21, 2007) wrote “The title of Dexter’s book
 refers to Joseph Heller’s arithmetic. Conceived as Catch-l8. 
his novel sank to Catch 11, caught up a bit by becoming 
Catch l4, before making the decisive leap to Catch 22.”
 

But titles being what they are, not all titles are correct and 
some present other problems of interpretation. For example, 
as Christopher Hitchens pointed out in Hitch 22 (a title that
 is itself an allusion to Catch 22) that “ It is characteristic 
of Martin (Amis) to have pointed out that Dickens’ title 
Our Mutual Friend contains, or is, a solecism. One can 
have a common friend but not mutual ones.
    Titles are sometimes misinterpreted. For example,
Colin Fleming  once had a professor who believed
 that the impressive titular number of 20,000  Leagues
 Under the Sea referred  to oceanic depth, rather than
 distance traveled. Many a reader has made the same
 mistake.
 
++

TITLES
 
It’s (QUEEN AND COUNTRY)  a slightly ironic title, obviously, 
and I wanted one which had a bit of a ring that associated it 
with Hope and Glory. And the Queen coming to the throne 
was quite an important part element of the story. Skiving was 
my original title – but I was dissuaded, because Americans 
wouldn’t know the word, and nobody knew how to translate 
it into other languages.
 
John Boorman in Sight and Sound (July, 2015)
 
 
In looking over an autumn catalogue, we came across a series 
of books for young persons in which we were struck by the titles 
When Mother Let Us Help and When Mother Lets Us Cook. We trust 
the series will be extended along these lines. If so, we intend 
to use as gifts for H. 3rd, When Father Lets Me Stoke the Furnace, 
When Father Lets Me Shine His Shoes, and When Father Lets Me
Lend Him Money.
 
Heywood Broun
 
 
 
(Woody) Allen’s working title for Annie Hall was  “Anhedra”  
a term coined by the French psychologist Theodule –Armand 
Ribaud to describe “the inability to experience pleasure from 
actions usually found enjoyable.”
 
Philip Fiens. (??) “Woody’s Blues” in TLS
(October 4, 2013).
 
 
What’s Up, Tiger Lily (the discreet comma was not always in the title)…
New Yorker. “Goings on About Town” (September 3,1973
 
 
I once had a professor who believed that the impressive titular 
number of 20,000  Leagues Under the Sea referred  to oceanic 
depth, rather than distance traveled.
 
   Colin Fleming
 

 
Mr. Inge’s title (THE DARK AT THE TOP OF THE TOP STAIRS) 
is meant to suggest that there is inevitably a certain amount 
of darkness ahead for all of us as we climb our weary way to 
Heaven, but his play contains the reassuring message that a 
good many of the terrors infesting the gloom are imaginary and 
that the real ones can usually be defeated if we can only meet 
them hand in hand.
 
Wolcott Gibbs. Reviewing  William Inge’s play
For The New Yorker (December 14, 1957)

 
Why it is an absolute fantasy. Even the title doesn’t exist:
 there is no such reading on a compass as north by northwest.

Alfred Hitchcock
 
 
It is characteristic of Martin (Amis) to have pointed out that 
Dickens’ title Our Mutual Friend contains, or is, a
Solecism. One can have a common friend but not 
mutual ones.
 
Christopher Hitchens. Hitch 22 (a title that is 
a punning reference to Catch 22.
 
 
 Don Juan in Hull
 
  Title of an essay by Clive James  about the poet Philip Larkin
 
**
 
The title of Dexter’s book refers to Joseph Heller’s arithmetic.
 Conceived as Catch-l8. his novel sank to Catch 11, caught up 
a bit by becoming Catch l4, before making the decisive leap 
to Catch 22.
 
James Campbell, reviewing Gary Dexter’s Why Not Catch-21? 
for TLS (September 21, 2007)
 
**
 
SHEILA LEVINE IS DEAD AND LIVING IN
NEW YORK (1975)]
 
If  the title were not meant to be satiric or witty, but merely an 
unerringly accurate description of the film’s content and mood,
 then it is the only thing about the movie that works.
 
William K. Everson in Films in Review (March 1975)
 

 
If you think the title (“A BEAUTIFUL LIFE”) stinks, try the movie.
 
    Anthony Lane
 
**
 
“Now listen, he (Herman Levin) said, “we’ve got to have a title.
 People have to know the name of what they have seen so they 
can tell their friends to go see it!” His logic was irrefutable, 
“Call it anything,” he went on.“you can always change it on 
the road. After all when Oklahoma opened it was Away We Go.” 
“Why don’t we just take the title we dislike the least ,” I suggested. 
There was a collective, apathetic nod. After a brief summary 
of all the candidates, we decided the title we found the least 
indigestible was My Fair Lady, and with a helpless  shrug we 
agreed to it. A few months later we all thought it was brilliant 
-–except Fritz (composer Frederick Loewe), who still liked 
‘fanfaroon.’


Alan Jay Lerner. The Street Where I Live.
 (W.W.Norton Company, 1968). Herman Levin was
The producer of the theater musical My Fair Lady.
 
 When Browning published  series of eight volumes of poems
 in the six years preceding his  marriage, he called them 
Bells and Pomengranates. He thought everyone would 
immediately understand the significance of the title and 
nobody did, Finally he explained  that by “Bells” he meant 
sound and by “Pomengranates” he meant  sense; and that 
the two words together signified the union in good poetry 
of music and meat, or sound and sense.”
 
William Lyon Phelps. Yearbook.
 (New York: The Macmillan Company,1935. P.14.
 
    ON GETTING THE RIGHT TITLE
   FOR A MYSTERY NOVEL
    
     On my Christmas Holiday
     I decided to read a mystery by Brett Halliday --
     Murder and the Married Virgin with Mike Shayne.
    It’s a title I can’t get out of my brain.
 
     LJP
 
**
 
Queenie’s Whim is a title I cannot forget. It is the title of 
a novel I do not expect or want to read. The novel was 
by Rosa Nonchette Carey, whose readers must now be 
fewer than they were.
 
 William Plomer. Electric Delights
 
Some years later, he ( Jeffrey  Farnol) wrote The Amateur Gentleman – a rather curious title, for could there be a professional gentleman?
 
William Lyon Phelps. Yearbook. (New York: The Macmillan Company,1935. P.14.
 
In the reference room of the  old Donnell Library in Manhattan 
there was once a one-volume reference book titled INDEX TO WOMEN. 
It’s a title that gives me great pleasure and one that invokes 
numerous fantasies, The full title is INDEX TO WOMEN OF THE WORLD 
FROM ANCIENT TO MODERN TIMES: BIOGRAPHIES AND PORTRAITS  
by Norma Olin Ireland.
 
Louis Phillips
 
 
He (GORE VIDAL) once joked to me that he meant to call his first memoir An Actor Prepares, cadging the title from Stanislavski. Instead, he called it Palimpsest , ‘a word that no one will no,’ he said. ‘But then it’s a life nobody will know, particularly after reading the book.”
 
Michael Mewshaw. Sympathy For the Devil.
 
 
 
     Why “Dangerous Turns”? Because in many of  my novels 
the characters – family, couple, or  isolated individuals  -- 
suddenly find themselves facing an event that will change 
their destinies. Had I not had Maigret dream of a profession 
that, unfortunately, does not exist, that of “Mender of Destinies.
 
Georges Simenon. – Intimate Memories 
(Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984)
 
 
 **

MOAT
 
“Man who builds castles in the air; fantasizer,”

Somedays I feel like a toad in mudwort.
But I am at an age now
Where I no longer care
About building castles in the air.
What I worry about now is the moat.

Louis Phillips

 
“I speak a lot of time working in saloons… I was a kid… 
They paid you and the checks didn’t bounce. I didn’t 
meet any Nobel Prizewinners in saloons but if Francis 
of Assisi was a singer and worked in saloons he would 
have met the same guys.”
 
Frank Sinatra, quoted by Pete Hamill, reported also in 
“Sinatra’s Song”  by John Lahr in  Profiles (The New Yorker, 
November 3, 1997)
**

NEW BOOK BY ROBERT KARMON

ROBERT KARMON
The Resettlement of Isaac

https://pleasureboatstudio.com/product/the-resettlement-of-isaac/

Order directly from the Publisher, $18.00, 
apple e-book
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ROBERT KARMON
The Resettlement of Isaac
New pub date: August 15th
PRE-ORDER $18
Order both for 25% off with coupon code: Isaac_set
 
A theater script, companion piece and sequel to the historical fiction, 
Isaac, based on the true, incredible story of Isaac Gochman, 
a 17-year old from Rovno, Poland, who, in one horrific night, 
survives a Nazi massacre of his entire family along with 20,000 
other Jews. Thrust alone into the forest and the wilderness of war,
 Isaac finds the courage to fight back as a Russian partisan blowing 
up Nazi trains, and finds the passion to fall deeply in love with Anya, 
a Russian partisan nurse—in love for the first time in his young life.
 It is a tragic love that transcends religious differences. Many years
 later in New York, the elderly Isaac is still haunted by the memory 
of his first love. His only friend, a young German-American woman,
 is tormented herself by doubts about her father’s role as a German 
soldier during the war. Deeply affected by Isaac’s past, she becomes
 the loving caretaker of his memories after he is gone. The play 
confirms what Faulkner once wrote, “The past is never dead, 
it’s not even past.”
 
ROBERT KARMON is an award winning playwright, published poet, s
short story writer and published screenwriter, who has worked on 
screenplays for Columbia pictures, CBS and Eddie Murphy Production. 
He was a member of Playwrights Horizon and Edward Albee’s 
Playwrights Unit. As a Professor of Literature and Creative Writing, 
he has taught at Temple University, Queens College, Hunter college, and is currently Professor Emeritus of Literature and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College in Garden City, Long Island. His book, Isaac 
was published by Pleasure Boat Studio in 2017. He is married 
with two daughters and three grandchildren.

EXISTENTIALISM

   Having studied existentialism in an offhand way since 1935, 
I become more and more convinced that its meaning can be 
reduced to the following formulation:
      
Existentialism means that no one else take a bath for
      you.
 
  Delmore Schwartz.  “Existentialism: The Inside Story”
 in The Ego is Always at the Wheel.”

**

  J.D. SALINGER
 
 
      He seemed to regard his literary success as a moral stain,
 It would be hard to think of a contemporary American writer 
whose personal life was more true to the ethos of his fiction.
 
      Michael Greenberg. The New York Review of Books 
(March 15, 2010)
**

MY SECOND RECOMMENDATION

There should be annual  literary award for the wildest, most 
outrageously verbal sleigh-ride work of fiction. 
BACK TO THE WINE JUG would win hands-down!
 It takes a brave author to write a novel in rhyming quatrains
 about Diogenes and Victoria Woodhull (yes, that Victoria Woodhull)
 return from the underworld to wander through Birmingham, 
Alabama, to search for an honest man. Lots of luck! As 
Gloria Steinem may or may not have said: "The Truth will 
set you free, but first it will piss you off. "
      With an unscrupulous  and evil  J. Edgar Hoover in 
hot pursuit of our protagonists, the inventive rhyming plot twists 
& turns.  Should we worry whether comic writers are essential
 workers or not? As for the puns  & general word play, 
if' the author had lived in an earlier age  he would have been 
burned at the stake. 
     Oh Hell, burn him at the stake now in Birmingham and 
be done with him.
 **

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A PAGE RIPPED UNTIMELY
FROM THE CALENDAR OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS
 
 
 
When I fall in love with a woman who possesses a Latin face,
Noble carriage, or a figure
Promising, on the calendar of earthly delights
A new holiday,
I  soon discover, unlike  Columbus or Casanova,
She is completely up-to-date,
Contemporaneous with the next century,
Complete with rocket boosters,
Whereas I am wandering, perplexed & lost,
In Late Medieval and Renaissance Europe.

Louis Phillips