I suppose the dumb movies of the past were relaxed because they weren’t trying to do anything much, apart from getting Doris Day married off, or maneuvering as many confrontations between Joan Crawford and Bette Davis as possible.

Penelope Gilliatt . The New Yorker (July 13, 1968)

**

    Not everybody who speaks about language need be a linguist. For example, in August of l934, this motion picture producer and director stood befor 500 summer session students at Columbia University and declared that consonants were disappearing from our speech in favor of vowel sounds.

      He said: “Where ever you go, you hear such phrases as ‘oh yeah, gotta go hoe.’ This tendency to drop the consonants, as shown by the lost ‘m’ in the foregoing, applies not only to young people but to adults as well.”

     Who was this Academy-Award winning director?

MOVIES

One always more or less believes to have ‘dreamed’ it when one recalls Claudette Colbert bathing in a pool filled with asses’ milk at the beginning of DeMille’s ‘Sign of the Cross.”

Salvador Dali

Movies are so unforgiving because any moment when the story is not developing, you’re dead.

William Goldman

In the world of 2001, people have become so machinelike that the most human character turns out to be a machine –that’s the essence of Kubrick’s dark prophecy: as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it s our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.

Nicholas Carr      The Atlantic (July/August 2008)

**

Film doesn’t work as a bunch of still frames, It happens in the gap between frames, and in our imagination of how we’re moving forward in time, moving somewhere in space, or seeing from someone else’s point of view. It’s not in the shots; its in the space between, and it’s all in your head.

Stan Douglas, quoted in The Guardian (May 9, 2014)

**

Two or three years ago, I had the impression that everything had already been done, that there was nothing left to do that hadn’t been done before. In short, I was a pessimist. Since Pierrot (Pierre Le Fou) I no longer have this feeling at all. Yes. one has to film everything, to talk about everything. Everything remains to be done.

Jean-Luc Godard

**

FILM SCHOOL

When I attended school,
Francis the Talking Mule
Was not highly thought of.
No wonder my dissertation received an F.
**

ON TYPE CASTING

Asked Buster Crabbe,
“Why can’t I play the life of Christian Grabbe
Instead of Flash
Gordon? At least Grabbe enjoyed pleasures of the flesh.”

**

                    MARLON BRANDO
   Brando, Marlon –
   Never played Harle-
   Quin.
   He preferred characters involved with sin.
**
COACH JAKE , a documentary  by Ian Phillips about the nation's high school soccer coach with the most games won, can be seen for free
on Amazon.com

**

CASTING NEWS:

The Life of Eli Whitney -- starring Joseph Cotton
TAXI -with Cab Calloway
HURRICANE -- starring Gale Storm
**

**
FILM REVIEW FROM A GUEST REVIEWER
Finally saw Ford versus Ferrari. Evidently the producers thought car races are so interesting that they can carry formulaic writing and lifeless acting. They can’t. Because car races don’t go anywhere.  The square peg in a round hole formula has produced some good pictures like The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit but these writers used it right off the shelf without dusting it off. Christian Bale had the handicap of being able to act only  from the nose down because of his goggles so he could just suck in his cheeks and grimace like the Joker. Henry Ford II was the Penguin, I guess, and the kid was Robin. Matt Damon seemed disengaged from the film, which I guess was a sound decision. Still, kinda strange not to give the biggest star a love interest. A closet gay?  Blowing up Bale off stage must have been the only way they could figure to kill this turkey.  And I hate Australian accents. Now I feel better. For that to have been an Award nominee says something.

S. Kin Flic
**

3 QUESTIONS FROM 505 MOVIE QUESTIONS
YOUR FRIENDS CAN'T ANSWER

1.In Hong Kong, the title of the 1955 film directed 
by Stanley Kramer, and starring Robert Mitchum
and Frank Sinatra, was The
Heart of a Lady as Pure as a Full Moon Over The Place 
Of Medical Salvation. In the United States, the film
was known by what shorter title?

2. Because his parents were strict Calvinists, this
   writer/director did not see his first movie until
  he was seventeen years old. The first movie he
  saw was Walt Disney's Living Desert. Since then,
  he went to write Taxi Driver, Blue Collar, and 
 Rolling Thunder. He directed Blue Collar (1979]
and American Gigolo (1980), Who is he?

3. The Cincinnati Reds baseball team once 
autographed a second base bag and sent it
to cowboy star Roy Rogers. Why?

ANSWER TO CONSONANT LOSS:

   Cecil B. De Mille

ANSWERS TO 3 MOVIE QUESTIONS

1.Not As a Stranger

2. Paul Schrader. He also wrote the film script

for Raging Bull.

3. The Cincinnati Reds sent the autographed base

to Roy Rogers because the boyhood house of the

future “King of the Cowboys”stood on the location

of second base in Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium.

puzzle (n.)

c. 1600, “state of being puzzled,” from puzzle (v.); meaning “perplexing question” is from 1650s; that of “a toy contrived to test one’s ingenuity” is from 1814.

Online Etymological Dictionary

LA TRIVIATA #31
 
 
1. Who or what is the only title character in a Walt Disney movie who does not speak?
 
2.  You are living in England in the 1890’s and
 you spy someone wearing a “Piccadilly Window.” 
What is a “Piccadilly  Window”?
 
3. If you use an estoque, what profession do you 
most likely belong to:
 
    A. Bullfighting
    B.  Beer making
    C.  Pole vaulting
    D.  Cabinet making
 
4. This actress born Margarita Carmen Cansino on October 17, 1918  and was labeled “A Love Goddess” by motion picture publicists was
called “my favorite dance partner” by Fred Astaire.
By what screen name was Ms. Cansino known?
 
5.  The 8th Century Saint –Saint Hubert –became 
the Patron Saint of what group of people?

   A. Soldiers
   B. Beggars
   C. Hunters
   D. Dancers

6. Popeye ate a lot  of spinach. What was his friend 
Wimpy’s favorite food?
 
7. What are the holes in Swiss cheese called?
 
8.  What well-known entertainer called his
    $75 violin “Old Love in Bloom”?
 
9. In 1945 what (according to Life Magazine) was 
the most heavily fortified place on the planet?
 
10. “Tell Mother….tell Mother….I died for my country” 
were the final words of what American assassin?

11. Walt Disney’s body has been cryogenically  
frozen.. True or False?
 
12. Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharti  became the 
first book in Arabic  to be awarded  what 
international prize for fiction in 2019?
 
13. If you purchase acetylsalicyclic acid, what have you bought?

14.  Eric  Arthur Blair is better known by his 
pen name. What is it?
 
15.  In January to February 2020, what was the
average speed of a taxi cab in Mid Manhattan,
NYC?
 
    A. 4.6 MPH
    B. 5.7  MPH
    C.  6.9  MPH
    D. 7.1 MPH
 
 
16. What United States President was nicknamed Dutch?

17. What is the name of the Memphis Estate 
located at 3764 Elvis Presley Blvd.?
 
18.  If you add up the values of all the cards
in a 52 card deck (Ace being 1,& King 13)
what do the cards add up to?

19. Charles Dickens’ great novel A TALE OF 
TWO CITIES takes place in what two cities?


 20.  The innovative real estate developer James Rouse (1914-1996) who received the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor a U.S. civilian may receive, called whatCalifornia tourist destination “the greatest 
piece of urban design in the United States”?



ANSWERS
 
1. Dumbo
 
2. A  monocle
 
3.  A) Bullfighting. The word occurs in a Hardy Boys’ 
mystery – The Clue of the Broken Blade :
“A very valuable and unusual sword,” the man
 answered. “it was used long ago by a matador 
in bullfights. He must have been a great favorite, 
for this estoque—that’s the name of the 
matador’s sword – is unusually attractive.”
 
4. Rita Hayworth
 
5. Hunters
 
6. Hamburgers
 
7. Eyes
 
8. Jack Benny. During World War II, he auctioned it
 off  to raise money for Victory Bonds .
 
9. Iowa Jima
 
10. John Wilkes Booth
 
11. False
 
12. The Man Booker Prize for Fiction. Celestial Bodies
 was also the first novel written by an Omani woman 
to be translated into English.
 
13. Aspirin. Bayer changed the name 
acetylsalicyclic acid for marketing purposes 
to aspirin in 1899.
 
14. George Orwell
 
15.  D--7.1 MPH
 
16.   Ronald Reagan.
 
17.  Graceland
 
18.  364 (one shy of the number of days in a year).
 
19. London and Paris
 
20. Disneyland
 

h
CROSSWORD  PUZZLE CLUES

1, Spear carrier? 9 letters
 
Clue by Mark Diehl
 
               2 Capital of Latvia
       Clue by Daniel Walsh


ANSWERS:

!. PICKLEJAR
 
2. EURO

hg
A.
 
I have on hand 3 objects, exactly the same. Each object
Is exactly the same size, and yet it is possible to place
two of the objects inside the third. What objects am I
talking about?

B. You have 3 coins -say a nickel, a quarter, and a half-dollar-- and you toss them up in the air. What are the
odds of the three coins all landing heads up or all three
tails up?

C. How is possible to show that 7 is half of 12?
 
Answers at the end of the blog.
 **



 Some Cryptic Clues by Frank W. Lewis in The Nation

 
l. “Was its rubber worth a fortune, possibly  (8)
 
2. Where a little green might be found,
 and nothing unchanged  (5)
 
3. But Ophelia never got herself there (7)
 
4. Like a circle of three blind mice (5)
 
5. Given new heart, and managed to get one acre dug (10)
 
 
6. Certain, as suds are (7)
 
7.A battering ram pushes a killer
inside  (7)
 
8. Proving a detective should be half naval hero and half craftsman (5,5)
 
9. in the Tuileries, you might have a good case for sewers (4)
 
10. Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer
according to the titles  (9,5)
 
 
ANSWERS

1. Aladdin’s Lamp
2.  Oasis  (Nothing, as is)
3. Nunnery (Hamlet tells her “Get thee to a nunnery”)
4.  Round  (a circle is round, & “Three Blind Mice” is sung as a round)
5. Encouraged (anagram of one acre dug)
6. Assured (anagram of as suds are)

7.Grampus (hidden in the sentence—
  battering ram pushes)
 
8. Perry Mason (Oliver Hazard Perry)
 
9., Etui (letters in Tuileries)
 
1.    a small ornamental case for holding needles, cosmetics, and other articles. "exquisite etui cases fitted with scissors, bodkin, and thimble" Thus, the word in
the clue refers to persons who sew.
 
10. Adventure Story (The correct titles are The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
 
 
ANSWERS TO 3 OBJECTS
 
A.  Rubber bands and/or Shirts
B.  The 3 coins may land in 8 combinations:
                    H  H  H           T T T
                    H  H  T   or     T T H
                    H   T  H           T H T
                     H  T  T           T H H
So 2 chances out of 8 that all 3 coins'
will land all heads or tails, or 4 to 1 odds.

3. Twelve in Roman Numerals - XII
   Slice it half VII = 7
**



Samuel Loyd (from WIKIPEDIA)

January 30, 1841
Philadelphia, United States
Died
April 11, 1911 (aged 70)
Known for
Chess, puzzles, mathematical games
Samuel Loyd (January 30, 1841 – April 10, 1911),[1] born in Philadelphia and raised in New York City, was an American chess player, chess composer, puzzle author, and recreational mathematician.
As a chess composer, he authored a number of chess problems, often with interesting themes. At his peak, Loyd was one of the best chess players in the US, and was ranked 15th in the world, according to chessmetrics.com.
He played in the strong Paris 1867 chess tournament (won by Ignatz von Kolisch) with little success, placing near the bottom of the field.
Following his death, his book Cyclopedia of 5000 Puzzles[2] was published (1914) by his son.[3] His son, named after his father, dropped the "Jr" from his name and started publishing reprints of his father's puzzles.[4] Loyd (senior) was inducted into the US Chess Hall of Fame in 1987.[5]





 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
TELL ME A RIDDLE
 
I win some, I lose some.
The days? What do they know?
They get away from me,
But they never belonged to me
In the first place & by now
 
I have overstayed my welcome
& am besieged by riddles.
I am the chicken that crossed
The road, the man afraid
Of his own shadow. That said,
 
I place my deepest trust
In what I do not know,
A universe riddled by sweep
Of mystery, tilt of planets
Over ruin,  amid vast nets
 
Of shining & darkness. Trust
The living world to lead us
To better versions of ourselves,
The snake with its tail
In its mouth. Tell me, tell
 
 
 
 
 
 
Me what has 6 arms, 6 legs, 3 eyes,
& sings? The Cyclops trio
Singing “I Don’t Know Why
I Love You Like I do.” That doubt too
Does not possess an answer. Cry
 
Me river over my life passing.
The days, pushing & pulling,
Know nothing, but when I shed
My skin, what shall I answer?
Better to have gone naked
 
Than clothed in false wool.
Mortality is the ultimate riddle.
& makes the Sphinx,
Destroying both foul & fair,
Blush with shame. Man?
Solve that riddle If you can.
 
 
 
Louis Phillips
375 Riverside Drive
Apt. 14C’
New York, NY, 10025
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
FLYING BY THE SEAT OF MY PANTS
 
 
Flying under the radar of grief,
I want no medals, deserve none.
 
On the television monitors,
James Cagney stars


In something or other, 
Some comic relief, no farce,
 
He’s being cashiered
Out of the Royal Air Force,
 
For flying by the seat of his pants.
No romance.
 
Like a lost pilot, all my life
I have ignored the instruments
 
& have flown over  a vast expanse
Of loveliness.
 
Stars are fixed, but nothing in my life
Can be counted upon
 
To remain. Planets revolve
Amid indifferent spheres, worlds rife
 
With mysteries entangled with fog
& rain, wind velocities,
 
Fragile mortalies & runways
Too undependable to land upon.
 
I flew by the seat of my pants.
I have no medals. I deserve none.
 
 
Louis Phillips
375 Riverside Drive
Apt. 14C
New York, NY, 10025
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
THE MOVIES AT 24FPS RECREATE OUR UNIVERSE

Not now, wanton!
The Spirit of Cinema roils elephantine waters.
Time, truant with light,
To make, in our own image, movies .
 
With gigantic hotsy-totsy stars,
Their nonillion satellites in lather,
No small universe this.
(FLICKS LICK LUX)
 
Cinema divides day from night,
Day For Night
& whatever fans look upon,
Is good.
 
Many a Paradise or Roxy
Run fire,
Smattering  life-blood
Onto the pitch,
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Screens,
Radiant with high-tide breathing.
 Next plunge the plants,
With everything that creepeth.
 
A.   I have on hand 3 objects, exactly the same. Each object Is exactly the same size, and yet it is possible to place two of the objects inside the third. What objects am I talking about? B. You have 3 coins -say a nickel, a quarter, and a half-dollar-- and you toss them up in the air. What are the odds of the three coins all landing heads up or all three tails up? C. How is possible to show that 7 is half of 12?   Answers at the end of the blog.  **  Some Cryptic Clues by Frank W. Lewis in The Nation   l. “Was its rubber worth a fortune, possibly  (8)   2. Where a little green might be found,  and nothing unchanged  (5)   3. But Ophelia never got herself there (7)   4. Like a circle of three blind mice (5)   5. Given new heart, and managed to get one acre dug (10)     6. Certain, as suds are (7)   7.A battering ram pushes a killer inside  (7)   8. Proving a detective should be half naval hero and half craftsman (5,5)   9. in the Tuileries, you might have a good case for sewers (4)   10. Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer according to the titles  (9,5)     ANSWERS 1. Aladdin’s Lamp 2.  Oasis  (Nothing, as is) 3. Nunnery (Hamlet tells her “Get thee to a nunnery”) 4.  Round  (a circle is round, & “Three Blind Mice” is sung as a round) 5. Encouraged (anagram of one acre dug) 6. Assured (anagram of as suds are) 7.Grampus (hidden in the sentence—   battering ram pushes)   8. Perry Mason (Oliver Hazard Perry)   9., Etui (letters in Tuileries)   1.    a small ornamental case for holding needles, cosmetics, and other articles. "exquisite etui cases fitted with scissors, bodkin, and thimble" Thus, the word in the clue refers to persons who sew.   10. Adventure Story (The correct titles are The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer     ANSWERS TO 3 OBJECTS   A.  Rubber bands and/or Shirts B. The 3 coins may land in 8 combinations: H H H T T T H H T or T T H H T H T H T H T T T H H So 2 chances out of 8 that all 3 coins' will land all heads or tails, or 4 to 1 odds. 3. Twelve in Roman Numerals - XII Slice it half VII = 7

 


 

l. Avoid fried meats which angry up the blood.

2. If your stomach disputes you, lie down and pacify it with cool thoughts.

3. Keep your juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move.

4. Go very gently on the vices, such as carrying on in society – the social ramble ain’t restful.

5. Avoid running at all times.

6. Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.

SATCHEL PAIGE

MORE HELPFUL ADVICE  FROM MANY SOURCES

OCCAM’S RAZOR
 
 The principle of Occam’s razor suggests that 
the simplest hypothesis is usually the correct one - - 
or as the character Gil Grissom in “CSI: Crime 
Scene Investigation” succinctly puts it, if you 
hear hoofbeats  “think horses, not zebras.”

    Michiko Kakutani.  New York Times (February 16,
2010)
**’
 
Don’t  let your mouth write a check that  
your ass can’t cash.

 Anonymous
 
Don’t fatten frogs for snakes.

    Anonymous
 
 
When you discover you are riding a dead horse, 
the best strategy is to dismount.
 
      Traditional wisdom of the Dakota Indians
 
Here is a rule I recommend. Never practice 
two vices at once.
Tallulah Bankhead
 
What matters most is how well you walk 
through the fire.

Charles Bukowski
 
If Your Plan Is for 1 Year, Plant Rice. If Your Plan 
is for 10 Years, Plant Trees. If Your Plan Is for 
100 Years, Educate Children
 
Confucius
 
 
It’s great there are so many demanding travelers 
who raise their voices. It makes it easier for the 
rest of us. Start out friendly and playful. The idea
 is to convey “I like you and want you to enjoy 
interaction.”
 
Chris Voss, a former F.B. I. negotiator, on how 
to negotiate travel perks, in The New York Times 
(February 2, 2020) Travel Section
 
 
Never give credence to ideas that occur to you
 indoors, said Nietzsche, which I think I’ll take 
as my New Year’s resolution.
 
                    Jeremy Clarke
 
The Spectator  (l4 January 2006)
 
 
A Japanese friend of mind gave me a piece of advice, 
which I should like to pass on to the general reader: 
Never, he said, go for the most beautiful girl in the 
brothel, avoid the best rooms – the ones on the first 
and second floors; the beautiful girls are irritable 
and greedy – they will certainly swindle you: always 
go to the third floor, where the plain girls will be
 much more pleased to see you, and consequently 
give you a better time.
 
    James Fenton.  You Were Marvelous (Jonathan Cape, 1983)
 
 …don’t accept a ride in a car with another hitchhiker.
                   Jules Feiffer. Backing Into Forward. (2010)
  
When authorities warn you of the sinfulness of sex, 
there is an important lesson to be learned: Do not 
have sex with the authorities.
 
   Matt Groening

     Satchel Paige

THE ANSWER IS:  345,465, 212

THE QUESTION IS:  Where does Louis Phillips 
rank on  Forbes’ list of the richest Americans?

**
 
The doctor has told me that I have a disease 
known as“The Accountant’s Bookkeeping Disease.” 
That means my body has one set of cells that it 
shows to the doctor and a second set that is 
shown to the insurance companies.
**
 
I am a very obedient human being. The other day
I passed a shop that said “WATCH REPAIR.” So
I did.
 
**
CONTEMPLATING THE NONES

Although some nuns
Know about the nones,
To me the nones
Are one of the unknowns.
No one I know
Knows the nones.

nones -- In the ancient Roman calendar the 7th 
day of March, May, July or October and on the 5th
 day of the other months.
The American Heritage Dictionary (Fourth edition)

**

 
Remember that sometimes not getting 
what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.
 The Dalai  Lama
 
Epigraph to A Wonderful Stroke of Luck 
by Ann Beattie (NY: Viking, 2019)
**

WHY I AM NOT A WORLD FAMOUS POET
 
When it comes to writing poetry,
I am out of my element:
Helium.
**

TALES OF HORROR
The tale of horror  and the supernatural fulfills 
one more valuable human function. Besides 
showing us where the taboo lines of our society 
lie, they emphasize the light by marking out that 
spot where the darkness takes over. The best tales 
in the genre make one point over and over again –
 that the rational world both within us and without
 us is small, that our understanding is smaller yet,
 and that much of the universe in which we exist is, 
so far as we are able to tell, chaotic. So the horror 
story makes us appreciate our own well-lighted 
corner of that chaotic universe.

Stephen King. :”Introduction” to Masters of Horror
 and the Supernatural : The Great Tales, compiled 
by Bill Pronzini, Barry N. Malzberg, & Martin H. Greenberg(New York: Bristol Park Books, 1981)

**

ON THE MOVIES & THE BIBLE    
Stanley Donen,  
Reading in the Bible about Onan,  
Thought: “Thanks to Bobby Breen,  
I cannot bring that story to the screen.  
**

 ON TELEVISION & MOVIE WESTERNS   

Wagon Train— 
It does not take Einstein’s brain 
To describe the plot: 
Settlers are attacked; Indians shot.    


  ON ADAPTING BOOKS FOR THE MOVIES 

Lewis, Jerry— 
Acquiring film rights to  I, The Jury,
 Announced: “I shall play Mike Hammer. 
Of course, I shall add a lot of physical humor!”  
**
  

 **      

SCHOLARLY NOTE TO LORD BYRON’S
DON JUAN (pronounced Don Chewin)
 
Don Juan,
Whatja doin’?
“Screwin’, screwin ‘
              & screwin’.”

CRITIC TAKE WARNING

Say what you will
About the joys of art,
Pleasure of rhyme,
Devotion & sacrifice,
Be profound as you dare,
But, Critic, take warning:
It does not mean very much
When there is no one
Breathing beside you
At 2 0'clock in the morning.
**

Add title

On READING

jjhON READING
 
I like to read on the beach. Once I took a “Neuromancer” paperback to Bora Bora
 and it was so humid there that every time 
I turned a page it came unglued and fell 
away from the book. I was slowly leafleting 
the island with William Gibson, although 
I like to think you could read single pages 
and still get the gist. As the last page fell 
away from the spine I was holding what 
looked like a gluey fish skeleton.
 
Laurie Anderson, in “By the Book” 
(The New York Times Book Review,
February 2020)
 **


THE DECLINE AND FALL
OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
ACCORDING TO THE DICK
& JANE READER


See S.P.Q.T. run.

 **
First time around, my eyes were opened 
to something important about who I  was 
at the moment of reading; later, to who or 
what I was becoming. But then I lived 
long enough to feel a stranger to myself – 
no one more surprised than me that I 
turned out to be who I am.”
 
Vivian Gornick, on reading Natalia Ginzburg.
“Look Again” by Alexandra Schwartz 
(The New Yorker, February 10, 2020)
 
‘**
 In the nineteenth century, when its literature
equaled that written at any place at any one 
time in history, Russia had no 'great' woman
writer--no Sappho, no Ono, no Komachi or
Murasaki Shikibu, no Madame de Stael or
George Sand, no Jane Austen or George 
Eliot--or so we might say when surveying
the best-known works of the age. But we
now know this truth to be less than true.
  Karolina Pavlova, born Karolina Karlovna
Jaenisch in Yaroslavi in 1807, died in
Dresden in 1893, after having lived outside
Russia for four decades....

Barbara Heldt. "Karolina Pavlova: The Woman
Poet and the Double Life" -- Introduction to
A Double Life by Karolina Pavlova, translated
by Barbara Heldt (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2019).

**

ON MICHAEL CONNOLLY & THE HARDY BOYS
  In  Number 3 of  The Hardy Boys Series  
-- THE SECRET OF THE OLD MILL – as the 
story gets underway, there is a plug for the 
previous two adventures:
 
      "However, the Hardy boys had inherited 
much of their father’s ability and deductive 
talent. Already they had aided in solving 
two mysteries that had kept Bayport by 
the ears. As related, in “The Hardy Boys: 
The Tower Treasure,” they had solved 
the mystery of the theft of valuable jewels 
and bonds from Tower Mansion… In 
the second volume of the series, “The Hardy 
Boys: The House on the Cliff,” has been 
told how the Hardy Boys discovered the 
haunt of a gang of smugglers…"
 
Now, if that isn’t an example of post-modernism 
in literature,  I do not know what is.  It is also 
smart marketing. Any reader starting the 
series at any point beyond the first volume 
would soon be hustled back to buy the 
books he missed.  I have to admit that 
age 11,I had no idea what bonds were, 
but at least I knew they were valuable.


 
GOING BEYOND THE BOUNDS OF FICTION IN MICHAEL CONNELLY’S  THE CROSSING
 
If   the creators of THE HARDY BOYS SERIES 
were clever and postmodern in promoting 
books in their series, Michael Connelly goes 
them one better in crisscrossing the 
boundaries of fiction and reality. In 
Chapter 12 of Connelly’s Hieronymus 
Bosch novel The Crossing, Connelly’s 
other famous character The Lincoln Lawyer 
(Mickey Haller)  steps outside the novel 
to become a living person who has had 
a film made about him:
 
  ‘Haller missed the entire session with Foster. 
He was either a celebrity lawyer or a notorious
lawyer, depending on how you looked at it. 
He had received the ultimate imprimatur 
of L.A.  acceptance – a movie about one 
of his cases starring no less than Matthew McConaughey.”
 
   The more I think about the above paragraph, 
the more confused I get about the blurred 
boundaries of fact (the movie) and fiction (the character who has a movie made
about his adventures). Obviously a ton 
of fictional characters have been brought 
to life on the screen, but the movies never 
became part of those characters’ 
identity/biography in the books they appeared.

**

                                ON WRITING
 
    I think  it is the fault of all American books, 
including my own. They pant so after meaning. 
They are earnestly moral, didactic; they build
 them ever more stately mansions, and they 
exhort and plead and refine, and they are,
insofar, books of error. A work of art should 
not rest on perception. “Here,” in other
words, “is my vision, be meaning what it may.”
 
Saul Bellow in a letter 
to Ruth Miller (July 27, 1955)
 
**
 
  I write for self-entertainment, and perhaps 
to afford the world after I have left it, some 
notion of what strange beings may pass 
through it without its knowledge.
 
         George Darley
 **
 
 
I am not a scientist and don’t deal in formulas, 
but as a writer I would, in the words of 
Henry James, take to myself “the faintest 
hints of life” and convert “the very pulses 
of the air into revelations.”
                           E.L. Doctorow
                   The Nation (July 14, 2008)
                                                           
 

I was recently asked what it takes to become 
a writer. Three things, I answered: first, one
must cultivate incompetence at almost 
every other form of profitable work. This 
be accompanied, second, by a haughty 
contempt for all the forms of work that 
someone has established one cannot do. 
To these must be joined, third, the nuttiness 
to believe that other people can be made 
to care about your opinions and views and 
be charmed by the way you state them. 
Incompetence, contempt, lunacy--once 
you have these in place, you are set to go.
 
 JOSEPH EPSTEIN
 
Commentary (April 2004)
**
 
 
     “Ernest Hemingway once said that an 
author must know the entire iceberg to 
write about only the tip. This has become 
a basic tenet among suspense novelists: 
Learn everything about an important topic 
but include just the fraction of details 
relevant to the story.”
 
Lisa Gardner. “A Visit to the Body Farm” in
The New York Times Book Review 
(July 28,2019)
 
 
 
The consideration governing the presentation 
of popular information may be reduced to 
three fundamental laws:  The Law of Irrelevant 
Details, which maintains that the writer can 
interest any reader in the commonplaces 
of everyday occurrences by adding even more commonplace details about them; Mencken’s 
Law of the  Boobeosie by which the writer
 assumes that the reader knows virtually 
nothing; and the Law of Conservation of Space,
by which the writer is compelled to pack 
a sentence like airline  luggage, with 
no superfluous articles.
 
Dr. Leo Hamalian. “The Case of the Missing 
Articles” in American Mercury  (March. 1957).
 
 
THE FUTURE OF WRITING & READING NOVELS
 

"Laura Esquivel physically incorporates music 
in her novel The Law of Law,which includes 
a CD. Indicators on pages refer to specific 
tracks, signalizing the points to pause and listen. 
This not only better appreciate the arias 
recorded in the book but also engages the 
audience in a way that wouldn't be possible 
without music."
 
Kevin Moises Suarez. "Author's Playlist" in World Literature Today (Winter 2020)

I was twenty-eight when I got married. My mother had a sign:
 last girl before freeway.
Joan Rivers

How wrong Emily Dickinson was. Hope is not 'a thing
with feathers.' The thing with feathers has turned out 
to be my nephew. I must take him to a specialist in
Zurich.
Woody Allen
**
My boyfriend -- he said to me that he reads Playboy for the
articles. I said, "Yes, I know. I just go to department stores
for the escalators.
Rita Rudner
**
 Yiddish-- a combination of German and Phlegm
   Billy Crystal, accepting the Mark Twain Humor Award
**
Sponges grow in the ocean. That just kills me. I wonder 
how much deeper the ocean would be if that didn't happen. 
Steven Wright


***********************************
The reason I signed the Beatles to a recording contract was 
that I found them
personally very funny."  George Martin

 


ONE OF THE LONGEST & BIGGEST LAUGHS
TO A LINE IN A BROADWAY MUSICAL COMEDY

“But Jumbo was too big for its cash registers, Though it received 
superb notices and played to over a million customers, it lost money. 
A few years ago theWhitneys got some of it back when Metro 
bought the movie rights. I don’t know when the studio is going 
to get around to making this picture, but before it does, I would 
suggest that it send the director to New York and instruct him to 
stand still some night near the parking space at 43rd Street and 
Sixth Avenue where the old Hippodrome stood. If he listens closely, 
he’ll still hear them yocking it up at what drama critics agree was 
the biggest laugh in the history of show business. It came near 
the end of the first act when a sheriff caught  Jimmy Durante trying 
to steal an elephant.
   “Where are ya going with that elephant?” yelled the copper.”
     “What elephant?” asked Jimmy.
 
BILLY ROSE. Wine, Women and Words/ (Simon & Schuster,1948)
 
 **
 
COMEDY/THE COMIC 
 
Jewish comedy is almost inevitably concerned with things 
gastronomical. The Jews enjoy talking about food more than 
any other people. Through many centuries they lived in 
enforced poverty. If they could not invent food out of thin air, 
they could at least invent stories and jokes about it to take their 
minds off their miseries.
 
Steve Allen. Funny Men (New York: Stein & Day, 1981).

God writes a lot of comedy... the trouble is, he's stuck with so 
many bad actors who don't know how to play funny. 
Garrison Keillor

Since the days of Pigmeat Markham, not to mention Lenny Bruce, 
the comedian's job has been to say the unsayable -- to give voice 
to the things that stink or bite us in the heart.
Hilton Als. "Bros' Night Out," in The New Yorker (February 10, 2020)

 
Comedians are by nature enemies of boundaries. They live easier 
by the laws of joy which they create than by the laws of good 
behavior which society sets down. Their job description is to 
take liberties – something the public applauds in art but abhors 
in life.
               John Lahr
 
For myself I think it's (psychoanalysis ) is dangerous. Someone who has inner sad feelings about certain things-- instead of them 'burying him, can be put to better use.' If I were to find out that these sad things are truly not sad, I think people would no longer find me funny -- 'cause funny had better be sad somewhere.
Jerry Lewis, quoted in Who the Hell is in the Picture by Peter Bogdanovich 
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004)
 
Funny isn’t about beauty –it’s about freedom.Sometimes that 
freedom leads to disrespect, ridicule, and outright offensiveness.
Robert Mankoff. Cartoon editor for The New Yorker

Woody Allen believes that S.J. Perelman summed up the character
of great comics is one phrase "Baby, it's cold outside".
Quoted by Phil Berger in "The Business of Comedy"
 (The New York Times Magazine, June 9, 1985)
 
The comedian’s slang for a successful show is “I murdered
 them,” which I’m sure came about because you finally realize 
that the audience is capable of murdering you.
 
Steve Martin. Born Standing Up.
 
 
“You may estimate your capacity for Comic perception 
by being able to detect the ridicule of them you love, without l
oving them less:  and more by being able to see yourself 
somewhat ridiculousness in dear eyes, and accepting the 
correction their image of you proposes.”
 
George Meredith. Essay on Comedy.
 
 

 
NOTES TO MONOLOGUES NEVER DELIVERED
 
 At 50th Street and 6th Avenue there is a billboard advertising
THE INVISIBLE MAN...SEE IT ON IMAX. Does viewing someone 
who is invisible on a big screen make it easier not to see him?

During the impeachment trial of President Trump, restaurants 
 in Washington D.C. featured on their menus a brand new 
sea-food dish  -- Squid pro quo.
**
 
 
I grew up in a very tough neighborhood. I remember
My very first alphabet book.  A was for ankle bracelet.
At home our phone had the bail bondsman on speed dial.On my block, if shop lifting were an Olympic event, my friends would take home all the medals—even if they did not win them. Not only was the neighborhood rough, it was terribly Racist. My mother brought home a package of Aunt Jamima mix and the Klan burnt a cross on our front lawn. 



NEW WESTERN IN TOWN: JEKYLL AND HYDE
MEETS THE THREE FACES OF EVE
 
This western is unique because the sheriff is also
the villain, which means that shoot-out is between
the sheriff and himself. Spectators  are confused when 
they see only one person on main street as
the sheriff  is forced to draw against himself.
 
LS. MAIN STREET  OF DODGE. HIGH NOON.
 
GUNSLINGER (TO THE SHERIFF ): This town ain’t big
enough for the two of you, Jekyll and…
 
JEKYLL: Hyde.
 
GUNSLINGER: I ain’t going to hide from the likes of you… two…
 
JEKYLL:  Here comes Eve White.
 
EVE ENTERS:
 
EVE:  High Handsome. Seen Hyde’s hide?
 
JEKYLL: No, Eve…
 
EVE: Eve black.
 
GUNSLINGER SHOOTS. JEKYLL BITES THE DUST. AS
HE DIES HE CHANGES INTO HYDE. EVE BLACK, DISTURBED BY 
WHAT SHE SEES, REVERTS TO EVE WHITE. THE GUNSLINGER 
REMOVES HER SKIN TO REVEAL AN ALIEN FROM ANOTHER PLANET.
 
FADE OUT.
 
 

On a more serious note, my good friend Zoran Amar is raising money on kickstarter for his documentary feature — Invincible Mind. The trailer for the film can be seen below.

Any contribution to help with the completion of the film will be greatly appreciated.

THE READING & WRITING ISSUE

SHOULD YOU BECOME A PUBLISHER?  

On December 21, 1950 in a letter to Burroughs Mitchell of Scribner’s , Norman Mailer declared that the title to James Jones’ great war novel –From Here to Eternity –was  an “awful title.” If you agree or disagree with Mailer’s assessment give yourself 150 points. If, however, you are asking: Who is James Jones? Who is Norman Mailer? What was Scribner’s? What war is being referred to? – then perhaps publishing is not the best choice for a profession for you.   **

   CAREER OPPORTUNITIES

Why didn't I go
Into demolition and carting?
Unfortunately, my readers
Believe I did.
**

LIT CRIT #87986954
 
Some readers adore it,
Some readers abhor it.
I mean by it,
Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit.

 **

2 CLASSIC SENTENCES FROM ANONYMOUS SOURCES

The following sentence (perhaps spoken by a young child to his or her mother who has brought a book to read) ends with 5 prepositions:

Why did you bring that book I did not want to be read to out of up for?

The following sentence contains the word had 10 times in succession:

Jane, where her classmate had had ‘had’ had ‘had had’; ‘had had ‘ had a better effect on Jane’s teacher.

  CERTIFICATE OF AUTHENTICITY

   Every word in this line is authentic.

******

Is it possible that you knew beforehand that this sentence would not contain your name?

 How will you know that this sentence will ever end unless you read it all the way to its conclusion?

READING  

If I ask myself what single piece of literature gave me the most pleasure in 1961, it was an article in the Scientific American called “Cleaning Shrimps. W.H. Auden. London Sunday Times (December 24, 1961)    

“What was the best book you’ve ever received as a gift?”            “The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel,” which was given to me on the 17th birthday. It opened a door in my mind, and behind that door I found the room where I wanted to spend the rest of my life.”   Paul Auster   from THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (Sunday, January 15, 2017)  

I don’t know if I wanted to be a writer, which is why I liked Jo March, or Jo March was a writer so I wanted to be a writer too. But I did the thing you can only do with books as a child, where your own autobiography and the contents of a book merge.   Greta Gerwig in TIME (December16, 2019)

In the decades since “Little Woman”was published, children’s novels with black girl heroines have also been published –- “Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry; “The Bluest Eye”; the works of Virginia Hamilton and Octavia Butler. But they do not possess the assumption of lingua franca that “Little Women” is given in cultural conversations. I do not know many who ask, for example, “Are you a Lauren?” in reference to “Parable of the Sower.”   Kaitlin Greenidge. “The Bearable Whiteness of ‘Little Women” in The New York Times (January 19, 2020)  

CRITICISM  

Everybody’s a critic. Right before coming to trial, Adolf Eichmann Remarked to his jailer    That Lolita was  “Quite an unwholesome book.”  Nabokov had offended  Eichmann ’s high moral standards.  

Louis Phillips      “In 1981 two books, Hemingway’s Reading 1910 –

1940 and Hemingway’s Library  gave scholars their first systematic view of Ernest Hemingway’s lifetime of reading. The two books, which overlapped at points, listed over nine-thousand titles which, at one time or another, passed through Hemingway’s hand.”   Michael S. Reignoel. “A Supplement to Hemingway’s Reading 1810-1940” in Studies in American Fiction, volume 14 (Spring 1986)  

hProbably the most seminal thing in my life was growing up and discovering the OZ books. I was about twelve or thirteen before I finally had to face the fact there was no way to get OZ. Ronald Johnson (poet)   One reads in order to ask questions.       Franz Kafka   Quoted by  Alberto Manguel. A History of Reading (Viking Penguin, 1996).              

“The experience of reading it for the first time is hard to describe. It’s like driving all night deeper into Georgia and finding yourself in a well-lit room with fantastic and familiar shadows on the walls, with an illuminating liquor sliding down clean inside you, telling things about yourself.”                Patricia Lockwood describing what it is like to have read Carson McCuller’s novel THE BALLAD OF THE SAD CAFÉ:        

Reading is a form of pleasure. Pleasure seekers, of course, take their pleasures in different ways and with different styles. The reading of an obsessive person differs from that of a hysteric. They produce different texts. Using psychoanalysis, we can differentiate classes of readers: the fetishist, the obsessive, the paranoiac, the hysteric.     Vincent B. Leitch DECONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM. Columbia University,l983. P.113.            

The novel’s ability to seduce readers with its alternate, and invariably more attractive, versions of reality was much lamented in the 19^th century. Thomas Jefferson blamed literature for encouraging “a bloated imagination, sickly    Book Review (April 2, 2017)    

A man lay dying, a vet recalled. He knew, or must have suspected, it was all over for him. From his trouser sidepocket he removed an ASE (American Services Editions) copy of Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. As his life ebbed away, he read the novel: the bullets and shells whizzing overhead, the dead, dying and soon to die all around him. ‘It was so strange, so strange.’   John Sutherland, describing a veteran’s report of observing a soldier dying on Omaha Beach on D-Day.  Magic Moments (2008)    

A friend of ours traveling tourist on the Flandre decided that he would like to make Stendhal’s “Le Rouge et le Noir” his shipboard reading. accordingly , he repaired to the tourist-class library, where he found Balzac, Diderot, Pascal,  deMaupassant, and, any another eminent author, but no Stendhal. When our friend asked the librarian about this, he was informed, “Ah, monsieur, Stendhal is where he belongs –in first class.   “Talk of the Town,” in The New Yorker (April 11, 1959).  

**

ON LYTTON & SIR WALTER SCOTT

I believe it was admitted by Scott
That some of his novels were rot.
How different was he from Lytton
Who admired everything he had written.
E. C. Bentley 
**

The initial C stood for Clerihew. Bentley's middle name became the name of
the 4 line light verse form that I am quite attracted to). In addition to Clerihews,
Bentley wrote mysteries, such as TRENT'S  LAST CASE.  Reading that mystery,
T. L. Baker observed:

...Bentley varies the 'verbs of saying': Thus avoiding monotony, but it also makes 
the writing more crisp in character. Examples of the device are: ' hinted';
'urged';' persisted'; 'grumbled'; 'observed'; 'inquired'; 'resumed'; 'reasoned'; 
'suggested'; 'admitted'; 'chuckled'; 'amended'; 'interjected' 'ventured'; 'ended' --
each appropriate to the context.
T. L. Baker, "E.C. Bentley: Trent's Last Case" in Notes on Chosen English Texts
**
Interjecting myself into the conversation about Trent's Last Case, I grudgingly admitted that I had chuckled, grumbled, and observed, but I admitted I had not
reasoned. Some listeners hinted, others urged that my manners be amended.
**


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WORD PLAY
 
 
Thisprominent member of British Parliament and the
 
author of Reflections on the Revolution in France (l790) , once said,
 
"Strip majesty of its exteriors (the first and last letters) and it
 
becomes a jest." Who was he?
 
       
 
Answer:
 
 EDMUND BURKE
 

CROSSWORD PUZZLES (CLUES)

1. “Hearts that don’t beat very much?(5  letters)

          by Timothy Polin

2. “Home squatters? (4 letters)

        by Ross Trudeau

  3. Group that’s on the take? (6,4)

             by Jaeh Pahk 

4. Most things on it might be taken as a

Matter of course. (4 letters)

        by Frank W. Lewis

5. hairstyle for a gunslinger?

         by Andrew Zhou

6. Helps for short people, for short

             by  Ori Brien

   7. What a historical librarian might do?  March this way, perhaps. (4,4)

            .   by Frank W. Lewis

ANSWERS TO CROSSWORD PUZZLE CLUES 

1. FILE PAST 

2. UMPS

3. CAMERA CREW

4. MENU

 5. BANGS

 6. ATMS

 7. FILE PAST

**

OF COOKBOOKS & THE MOVIES
 
       
 
       The other day I was standing in the gift shop for the American Museum of Folk Art, or some such place, and my attention was immediately drawn to  two new cookbooks on the market: THE GONE WITH THE WIND COOKBOOK and THE CASABLANCA COOKBOOK.
     Unfortunately, I was with a friend who was famished for lunch, and so I had to abandon the store before I had the opportunity to scan the recipes therein. I can only imagine titles such as  Tomorrow is Another Salad or Play It Again, Spam (and, yes, I know the line "Play it again, Sam" is not in Casablanca, but legend is always better than reality). What's next I wondered -- THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS COOKBOOK?  No, that was, even for my bizarre sense of humor, too shocking to consider.
     Still, all through lunch with my friend, I could not help but think that the fad of creating cookbooks to go with famous movies has not yet been fully explored. 
   In the near future, the following cookbooks are certain to go on sale:
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
l. THE  ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE COOKBOOK -- this book is certain to appeal to those persons who like  to explore the ethical implications of cooking and serving foods.  The dishes appear good on the outside, but are actually not wholesome on the inside.
   For example, "Lobster a la Mode" -- At first glance, the sight of moldy apple pie garnished with juicy flakes of lobster might appear to be appetizing, but further thought will probably warn us away in favor of something more traditional. 
 
 
2.  THE MACHINE GUN KELLY COOKBOOK -- This book features foodstuffs shot full of holes. Don't overlook "Up Against the Wall Swiss Cheese Fondu" -- a particular favorite on Valentine's day.
 
3. THE WAR OF THE WORLDS COOKBOOK -- or surprising things you can create with bacteria.
 
4. KRAMER VS. KRAMER COOKBOOK -- He cooks a dish one way; she cooks it another. Lawyers are called in to decide which of the two recipes will be served. Fun for the entire family.
 
5. THE GODFATHER COOKBOOK -- imagine the thrill your houseguests will feel when they wake up each morning with a baked horse delicately served in their bed.
 
6. THE HOME ALONE COOKBOOK SERIES -- recipes even a twelve year old can whip up. Amazing surprises for the unwary adult eater.
 
7. THE E.T. COOKBOOK -- In this cookbook, you have to call home to get the ingredients and the directions.
 
8.  THE JURASSIC PARK COOKBOOK -- Bring dead  foods back to life.
 
9.  THE TOWERING INFERNO COOKBOOK -- Unfortunately, to properly cook anything in this book you have to set entire high-rises on fire. Hence, most of the recipes  are too expensive for middle-class families. 
 
l0.  THE JOHN WAYNE COOKBOOK -- Everything you ever wanted to know about cooking  true grits...
 
11. THE LTTLE WOMAN COOKBOOK—actually a reprint of Lilliput’s favorite collection of Civil War recipes. It recommends the same recipes for larger women, merely serve smaller portions.
  
 
 
Anyway, now that you've gotten the idea, perhaps you can come up with some ideas of your own. I am, as they say, open to suggestions.
Maybe, with a burst of imagination, we can revolutionize the cookbook  publishing industry overnight.
 

‘ On language, words, word play etc. THE APPLE-SAUCE CHRONICLES

LANGUAGE

 “It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression “as pretty as an airport”.

     Douglas Adams

Language, according to the anthropologist Robin Dunbar, evolved because gossip is a more efficient version of the “social grooming” essential to animals living in groups.

John Tierney. The New York Times  (Science Times) October 16, 2007

NAMES

   Horseshoe crabs have lots of eyes, and the species name, Limulus polyphemus, derives from some of them. The two large eyes can be construed as squinting, hence Limulus ,which means  “squinting or aslant” in Latin. A pair of smaller eyes on top of the prosoma are so close together they might be mistaken for a single eye, hence polyphemus, from the Cyclops.

 Ian Frazer. “Blue Bloods” in THE NEW YORKER  (April 14, 2014)

**

ENGLISH

ENGLISH

     The word non-hyphenated is hyphenated.

                         Anonymous

He said it was a pity I had spoken English all my life, because it was so bad for the teeth.

Line from “The Captive Niece” by Mavis Gallant

**

 In standard English there are only two present tenses – I work, I am working. In English as spoken in white Appalachia, there are three – I work, I am working, I a’working. In black Appalachian dialect there five – I work, I am working, I be working, I a’working – and each has a different shade of meaning.

             Toni Morrison

Time (April 6, 1970)

THE WORD MUSEUM

In 2000, Jeffrey Kacirk’s  book – THE WORD MUSEUM: THE MOST REMARKABLE ENGLISH EVER FORGOTTEN – was published by  Simon & Schuster. Some forgotten  words collected by   Mr. Kacirk are:

l. album nigrum –the excrement of mice & rats

2. awblaster – a cross-bowman

3. bubulcitate – to cry as a cowherd

4. carry-castle  — an elephant

 5. cephalemonacy – divination by using a broiled

                                        head of an ass

 6. feague – to put fingers up a horse’s fundament

 7.  maffle – to stutter

****

THE APPLESAUCE CHRONICLES

Rin TinTinnitus – Movie dog whose barking leaves fans with ringing in their ears for hours after the movie is over.

DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HAYDEN – A noted Doctor has a second personality who composes symphonies.

“I had my nose removed,” Pinocchio said with a
straight face.
 
 
**
 
If a building has occupants, can it also have occushirts?
 
**
 
THE NEW GEOGRAPHY:
 
Pinnocc-Ohio – The state that grows larger whenever one of
its citizens tells a lie.

**
 
Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Distance.
Distance who?
Distance is a waltz, but the next dance is a tango.
 
*
What’s the difference between a doorman and a fashion designer?
One closes doors while the other adores clothes.
 
 
**

SENTENCES THAT FEATURE AT LEAST 5 CONSECUTIVE LETTERS OF THE ALPHABET:
 
l. ABC DEFtly spoken by a young child is pleasant to hear.
2. Do you fly KLM? NO.
3. Run to heR , STU, Very quickly.

DIFFICULT TO SAY ALOUD QUICKLY
 
Watch
 Watch
 Swatch.
 Which
 Watch
 Swatch?
 Switch
 Watch
 Swatch.

****
A LETTER TO THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

April 11, 2014

I totally like John McWhorter’s like of like. Like wow! The Grammar Police can whistle in the wind because the English
Language is stronger than all of us. It goes its own way.  
     Speaking of its, what’s with the its and it’s problem. Many of  my college students confuse  it’s for the possessive. But, think about it –it’s for a possessive is logical, since all possessive cases use the apostrophe S.  If you wish to know when it’s
denotes it is, placement in the sentence will make it clear.
Perhaps the confusion between its and it’s will eventually disappear. Like totally.

**********

THE PHLOX OF THURBER
 
 
America's noted humorist  James Thurber once noted, "On a recent night,
 
tossing and spelling, I spent two hours hunting for another word besides
 
'phlox' that has 'hlo' in it. I finally found seven." Can you?
 
***
 
Possible answers:
 
 
l. Decathlon
 
2. Pentathlon
 
3.Hydrochloric
 
4. Chloroform
 
5. Monthlong
 
6. Matchlock
 
7. Chlorine
 
8. Chlorophyll

*******

FROM MY GOOD FRIEND RICHARD GID POWERS: NOTES
ON THE TERM FIFTH BUSINESS

Fifth business? Here is the definition that Davies offers in a preface: "Those roles which, being neither those of Hero nor Heroine, Confidante nor Villain, but which were nonetheless essential to bring about the Recognition or the denouement, were called the Fifth Business in drama and opera companies organized according to the old style; the player who acted these parts was often referred to as Fifth Business."
Fifth Business in this case is Dunstable Ramsay, a crumpled old history professor with a wooden leg and an interest in mythology, magic and hagiography, who has just retired after 45 years of teaching in a private Canadian boys' school. A report of his retirement ceremony in the school's newspaper has "disgusted" him, not merely because of "its illiteracy of tone" but also because of "its presentation to the public of a portrait of myself as a typical old schoolmaster doddering into retirement with tears in his eyes and a drop hanging from his nose." To set the record straight and illustrate what "the vital though never glorious role of Fifth Business" can involve, Ramsay addresses a lengthy and indignant autobiographical letter to the school's headmaster. Mr. Davies's novel is the letter.
**
FIFTH BUSINESS
l Here is the definition that Davies offers in a preface: "Those roles which, being neither those of Hero nor Heroine, Confidante nor Villain, but which were nonetheless essential to bring about the Recognition or the denouement, were called the Fifth Business in drama and opera companies organized according to the old style; the player who acted these parts was often referred to as Fifth Business."
Fifth Business in this case is Dunstable Ramsay, a crumpled old history professor with a wooden leg and an interest in mythology, magic and hagiography, who has just retired after 45 years of teaching in a private Canadian boys' school. A report of his retirement ceremony in the school's newspaper has "disgusted" him, not merely because of "its illiteracy of tone" but also because of "its presentation to the public of a portrait of myself as a typical old schoolmaster doddering into retirement with tears in his eyes and a drop hanging from his nose." To set the record straight and illustrate what "the vital though never glorious role of Fifth Business" can involve, Ramsay addresses a lengthy and indignant autobiographical letter to the school's headmaster. Mr. Davies's novel is the letter.
The story it tells revolves around a misaimed snowball thrown late one afternoon in 1908 in the tiny Canadian village of Deptford. As it turns out, the lives of all five of the people involved in the incident are forever defined at the moment it happens.
It is not immediately apparent that they are. Percy Boyd Staunton, who throws the snowball, will grow up to marry the town's beauty and become one of the richest, most powerful men in Canada. Mary Dempster, whom the snowball strikes in the back of the head, will become a simpleton, the town's "hoor," and possibly a saint, too. Her husband, the Reverend Amasa Dempster, will live on for a time. Paul Dempster, whose premature birth is brought on by the impact of the snowball, will grow up to be the world's greatest magician. But certain paths will cross again and the incident will be resolved.

 
 

MOVIES

        Like most film-makers I have spent more time on movies I have not made than on ones that I have.

      John Boorman

    **  

I told Dale: "When I go, just skin me and put me on top of Trigger." And Dale said, "Now don't get any ideas about me."   Roy  Rogers

Epigraph to Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins (New York: Bantam Books. 1976)
**

CARRY ON CLEO carries the following credit: Based upon an idea by William Shakespeare.  (Carry On Cleo is a 1964 British comedy film, the tenth in the series of 31 Carry On films (1958–1992). The website ICONS.a portrait of England describes Carry On Cleo as “perhaps the best” of the series.^[3] Regulars Sid James, Kenneth Williams, Kenneth Connor, Charles Hawtrey, and Jim Dale are present and Connor made his last appearance until his return in Carry On Up the Jungle six years later. –Wikipedia)

DRAGON SEED (1944)…the Chinese simple-folk characters are played by Katherine Hepburn, Turhan Bey,Walter Huston, Agnes Morehead, Hurd Hatsfield, Akim Tamiroff, Aline MacMahon, and Henry Travers.   The New Yorker. “Goings On About Town: Movies”
(September10, 1973)             

Love Story. yes, I saw it on tv. I never laughed so much in my life, what a ridiculous hunk of pretentious phoney shit but looking at it as pure comedy it was magnificent, if you know what I mean. I guess each scene before it arrived. You know the world is really a long long way from solving ANYTHING when they gulp in this kind of tripe and admire it…      Charles Bukowski in a letter to Carl Weissner (March 23, 1973).  SELECTED LETTERS, Volume 3 (l971-1986) London: Virgin Books Ltd. 2004.    

It’s always been my formula to get the next picture set up before anyone’s seen the last one.  Alan Rudolph, Director of “Breakfast of Champions”    **  

The notion of these two characters falling rapturously, romantically in love is virtually revolting.’   Bosley Crowther, reviewing The Iron Petticoat, starring Bob Hope and Katherine Hepburn.          

BEWARE OF GREEKS BEARINGBUZZ CUTS   Headline for Manohla Dargis’s review of Clash of the Titans NY Times (April 2, 2010)   **  

Here’s one of the few rules in movies which matter: an actor won’t last as a leading man unless he plays characters who want something passionately.  Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster want power, and Buster Keaton and Clark Gable want girls. Gary Cooper and James Stewart seek justice….     David Denby   The New Yorker (January 29,2007)   **    

Beloved Infidel, as a film, left me cold as ice; I couldn’t relate to it. Gregory Peck was completely wrong and Deborah Kerr playing me, was too  finished a product, too sure of herself…and much too thin! You could see her bones in a swimming suit. No one has ever seen my bones. That film was made in 1959, and the person I would have chosen to play Sheilah Graham was Marilyn Monroe. I begged them to give her the part, but Jerry Wald said no.     Sheilah Graham in Playboy (May 1976)                  

There are movies based on comic books, movies based on toys, and even movies based on amusement park rides, burt nothing wears a bigger “hate me” sign on its back than a movie based on a novel written by a celebrity,            Grady Hendrix   Reviewing Ethan Hawke’s “The Hottest State” in  NY Sun (Auigust 24-26, 2007).                  

Scientists agree that half of our world is made up of elementary particles known as fermions and the other half is made up of advertising for “Happy Feet.”                         Grady Hendrix     

Whenever I find myself getting overwrought over problems with one of my films, I would say to myself. “It’s only a movie.” It never worked.  I was never able to convince myself.   Alfred Hitchcock   **

“The most beautiful thing about ‘Donnie Brasco’ is the opening credit sequences. That seems to be the fashion these days. Think of ‘Mars Attack!’ or the violated violin sounds at the beginning of ‘Seven’ or, best of all, the thumping credits of ‘Mission Impossible,’ which were so tense and sexy that you could leave the theatre immediately afterward without having to suffer the letdown of the film itself.”Anthony Lane. The New Yorker (March l7, 1997)

…a gratifying law of movie economics: the greater the frenzy with which money is thrown at         special effects, the less likely they are to linger in the heads of customers.   Anthony Lane. The New Yorker (September 2, 2019)          **

Curiously, the word “Jew” is never mentioned in the DeMille film, nor are the words  “Hebrew” or “Israelite.” Samson’s people are referred to only as “Danites” in what may have been nervousness about anti-Semitism during the McCarthy era.   Philip Lopate. “Samson and Delilah and the Kids.”
  

Shots of him (Fred Clark playing Marblehead) are always introduced with what may be called a visual rhyme – a buoy, oscillating as his head oscillates (and when his head has an ice-bag on it, the buoy has a seagull).       Richard Mallett, reviewing Don’t Go Near the Water, Punch (February 26, 1958)    

 Not long after the first World War, the movie baron Samuel Goldwyn set up a stable of eminent authors in an attempt to give silent screenplays more literary weight. One of the recruits was the Nobel-Prize winning Belgian writer Maurice Maeterlinck. Initially neither party seems to have been troubled that Maeterlinck spoke no English; and the great Belgian set to work on a screen version of his novel La vie des abeilles. When the script was translated Goldwyn read it with increasing consternation until he could no longer deny the evidence of his senses. “My God!” he cried. “The hero is a bee!”                   James Meek in The London Review of Books (4 November 2004)

  A movie imprisons your eyes. It acts on you, not you on it. Hence, you don’t “see” or “look at”  a movie. You watch  it  the way a cat watches a bird, until the cat strikes, kills, eats.     Leonard Michaels        

The  Exorcist was a landmark movie, both scary and disturbing. It was also the first and last time a Catholic priest actually wanted to give a woman control over her own body.     Dennis Miller   CLEOPATRA – Forty million dollars worth of Mediterranean splendor and cheap at the price. The leading roles are played by actors who are probably better known than the originals were.           THE NEW YORKER . “Goings on About Town.” July 6, 1963.   **  

 The first time I saw Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo was in 1958, its first run. I was in prep school. And it so moved, disturbed and overwhelmed me by the impact of its images that it altered my perception of life, of art and of myself. The twenty-six times I have seen film since have deepened those reactions.     Donald Spoto    

Wait until you see me in The Bible for John Huston. I’ve only seen thirty-five minutes of it, but it’s something else, something extraordinary. A symphony. It must be extraordinary because I play God three times. I’m a pre-echo of the trinity.   Peter O’Toole   Quoted by Ray Newquist in Showcase (William Morrow& Co.)      

Cinema is the mythology of the twentieth century.          Michael Powell        

Almost honouring Jean-Luc Godard,  (Gilberto) Perez’s discourse has a beginning, a muddle, and an end.       Frederic Raphael. The Benefits of Doubt.    

One always more or less believes to have ‘dreamed’ it when one recalls Claudette Colbert bathing in a pool filled with asses’ milk at the beginning of DeMille’s ‘Sign of the Cross.”   Salvador Dali              

In the world of 2001, people have become so machinelike that the most human character turns out to be a machine –that’s the essence of Kubrick’s dark prophecy: as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it s our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.   Nicholas Carr  

**

Whenever I found myself getting overwrought over problems with one of my films, I would say to myself, “Remember, it’s only a movie.” It never worked. I wasnever able to convince myself.

Alfred Hitchcock . Quoted in Charlotte Chandler’s It’s Only a Movie (Simon and Schuster, 2005)

**

On NORTH BY NORTHWEST

   The opening music, a fandango, anticipates the crazy dance Cary Grant is about to do across America. The final chase across Mount Rushmore was choreographed in the editing room to this fandango.”

  Bernard Herrmann

Quoted in Charlotte Chandler’s It’s Only a Movie (Simon and Schuster, 2005)The Atlantic (July/August 2008)  

“The commercial cinema is an entertainment or pastime for illiterate slves of an up-to-date ‘business civilization’ founded on mammon. The sham naturalism, the trendy romanticism, the sentimentality on the one hand with its psychological complement — brutality– on the other. The tinned literature and language and music of the cinema have had their big share in the disbasement of the idealistic significance if theatrical performance and workmanship.”              Theodore Komisarjewsky    

Desperate weeks produce disastrous results. Summer’s guarantee top send I/Q’s plummeting is in full swing. So this week at their movies,  the choices were robots running amok; Will Ferrell battling dinosaurs in an alternate universe called the Hollywood  back lot; various wolverines, terminators and ossified Star Trek Xeroxes; and another night trapped in yet another museum with Ben Stiller. I’d rather take my chances exposed to swine flu.   Rex Reed  

“If vacuity had any weight, you could kill an ox by dropping on it Michaelangelo Antonioni’s latest film, The Passenger.”    John Simon      There’s a scene in John Maybury’s new film Love is the Devil in which Francis Bacon has an orgasm while watching Battleship Potemkin. Now that’s what I call a motion picture.       Mark Steyn     **         

I don’t mean to  suggest that film is the source and model of all that is wrong in modern society. But I do think that the world of film, which includes those people who are madly enthusiastic about any film, need to examine very carefully what happens in  our minds when we watch endless violent imagery and feel no wound or repercussions. For one, I am no longer confident that a message has not been passed down to several generations, in their bloodstreams, in their nervous systems and in their trigger fingers.                David Thomson   See THE INDEPENDENT (October 10,2003), p.4.   **

  From Russia With Love. Ian Fleming is the late late show of literature. Perused at the witching hour. The violent adventures and immoderate amours of James Bond, Agent 007 of the British Secret Service, seems as normal as Ovaltine – and rather more narcotic,”   TIME Magazine ( April 10, 1964)  

Whatever happened to the good, honest practice of sticking numerals after a sequel’s title to indicate what number it was in the series? I grew up in the days of Jaws 2, Superman III and Police Academy 7 and, whatever the shortcomings of those pictures, at least you knew where you  stood. Generally speaking, the higher the number, the worse the film in question was likely to be.       

Toby Young    The Spectator, l8 August 200

LUMINOUS DECEITS —Verse about movies

ON THE MOVIES & THE BIBLE

 Stanley Donen,

 Reading in the Bible about Onan,

 Thought: “Thanks to Bobby Breen,

 I cannot bring that story to the screen.

**

ON TELEVISION & MOVIE WESTERNS

Wagon Train—

It does not take Einstein’s brain

To describe the plot:

Settlers are attacked; Indians shot.

EDDIE FISHER

Fisher, Eddie—

For awhile he was a steady

Husband to a movie star named Liz.

She left him for Richard Burton. That’s show biz.

**

Movie -OLA–OOH LA LA LA

MOVIE-OLA—OOH  LA LA

Selections from 505 Movie Questions Your Friend Can’t Answer by Louis Phillips (New York: Walker and Company, 1983)

1, In France the title of this Cary Grant film was advertised as Grand Mechant Loup Appelle (“Big Bad Wolf is Calling”). By what title is the film better known in the United States?

2. “You have the touch of a sex-starved cobra is a line from what 1942 classic film comedy starring Bette Davis and Monty Wooley?

3. Joseph Keaton, Jr.was Buster Keaton’s birth name. What American magician gave him the name Buster & why?

4. In 1938, what New York Yankee baseball star was offered the chance to play Tarzan in the movies?

5. Who was originally offered the role of Lawrence in David Lean’s epic film Lawrence of Arabia (1962)?

6. After a screen test, a talent scout filed the following report about an actor: “Can’t act. Can’t sing. Slightly bald. Can dance a little.” What dancer/singer and future film star did not measure up to the wrong-headed scout’s expectations?

ANSWERS:

1. The film is Father Goose (1964) . How a film can go from goose to wolf in translation remains a mystery. The song “Pass Me By:” with music by Cy Coleman and lyrics by  Caroline Leigh is sung this film.

 2. The line is delivered in The Man Who Came to Dinner. The film is  based on the 1939 play The Man Who Came to Dinner by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman. The play’s main character Sheridan Whiteside was based upon author, critic, and radio performer Alexander Woollcott.

3. As a child, Keaton fell down the steps of a medicine show wagon while his parents were performing. Fellow performer Harry Houdini saw him take the fall and said , “That was some buster you took.” The name stuck, and it was Buster Keaton from then on.

4. Lou Gehrig. He turned the part down. Instead he decided to star in the 1939 western Rawhide. He did not become a movie star.

   5. Albert Finny. He turned down the part because it would gave required him to sign a five-year Hollywood contract.

  6. Fred Astaire. No further comment necessary.