BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE #4






**





 EPITAPHS
  
  
 Beneath this stone our Bobby lies.
   He neither crys or hollers.
 He lived just one and twenty days
    And cost us forty dollars.
  
         Burlington Cemetery, Vermont
  
 **
  
   Under this Marble, or under this Sill,
   Or under this Turf, or ev’n what they will,
   Whatever an Heir, or a Friend in his stead,
   Or any good creature shall lay o’er my head,
   Lies one who ne’er cared, and still cares not a pin
   What they said, or may say, of the mortal within…
  
    Alexander Pope, an epitaph he wrote for himself
  
   










“I would be satisfied if they wrote on my tombstone, ‘He made people happy.” Charles Schulz, creator of PEANUTS. Quoted in SCHULZ AND PEANUTS by David Michaelis (New York:HarperCollins, 2007)





What noted American entertainer is buried under a tombstone that reads:
                                       THAT'S ALL FOLKS
                                
                                   
Answer at the end of this blog.
 






THUNDERSTORM OVER MANHATTAN





Ba da bing, ba da boom.
Ba da boom, ba da bing.
Fagehdaboutit.










**















According to the HARVARD HEALTH LETTER (27 HEALTH REVELATIONS)
"Laughter has been found to lower levels of stress hormones, reduce inflammation
in the arteries, and increase 'good' HDL cholesterol."





 MAY NOT BE AN ASSET ON A FIRST DATE
  
 I sd blah blah with charm & wit.
 She sd that’s true, so true.
 I asked, “What is Truth?”
 She replied, “I’m sorry. I must be going.”
   










SHOES





Any woman who, through the use of high heeled shoes or other devices, leads a subject of her Majesty into marriage shall be punished with the penalties of witchery.





Seventeenth Century Decree of Parliament





**





With the exception of chocolate dentures, there’s probably nothing in this world more impractical than glass shoes: their life expectancy must be as short as their discomfort level is horrific. So was Cinderella a naïve ditz, a dingbat with masochistic tendencies?





Tom Robbins. “Slipper Sipping” in Wild Ducks Flying Backward (New York: Bantam Books, 2005).





“I didn’t have 3,000 pairs of shoes. I had only 1,060.”





Imelda Marcos





**





“He (ED WYNN) had a collection of over eight hundred funny hats and three hundred bizarre jackets and coats that adorned his tall, pear-shaped frame. Also, an important part of his comical getup were his flapping over-sized shoes…”





Stanley Green. The Great Clowns of Broadway (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984)





**





ETYMOLOGICAL NOTE





Auto-da-Fe (Portuguese, literally “an act of faith) from the Latin actus, act and fidex, faith. A day set apart by the Inquisition for examining heretics, who, if not acquitted, were burned. TheInquisition burned their victims, being forbidden to shed blood; the Roman Church holding Ecclesia non novit sanguinem (the Church is untainted with blood).





Henry Frederic Redall. Fact, Fancy, and Fable.





Chicago: A.C. McLurg & Co., 1889)





COLLEGE NOTE # 1





I must unlearn what I have learned,
Undo so much of  what  I think I know.
No doubt I shall jettison many subjects.
Algebra is the first to go.
'***






COLLEGE NOTE #2





John Stuart Mill
Gives students much to mull
Over One idea & the next.
I wonder: can I resell my text?





       NATURE’S BEDROOM
  
          River Beds
          Sheets of rain.
          Blankets of fog.
          Who does Nature’s Laundry? 





,




















**





COLLEGE NOTE # 3





My friends are texting left & right.
Others are on the tennis courts.
I have to memorize this poem for my English Class.
No wonder I am out of sorts.





**





AUTHOR’S NOTE





One of my favorite writers is Saki. Christopher Morley said of him: “There is no greater compliment to be paid the right kind of friend than to hand him Saki, without comment.”  Here is Saki’s Author’s note to his novel The Unbearable Bassington:





The Story has no moral.
It points out an evil at any rate it suggests
No remedy,





LA TRIVIATA #30





1. The oldest living animal that we have record of lived to be 405 years old.     What species of animal?





 A. clam





 B. snail





 C. Amoeba





 D. tubeworm





2 . Beginning with Larry Corcoran, who pitched in the 1880s) there have been only 6 major league pitchers who pitched 3 no-hitters. Name any 3





on that short list.





3. What does the medical term  “The Great Pretender” refer to?






4. The song :”The Great Pretender” (Ooh ooh yes I’m the great pretender (ooh ooh) was first sung in 1955 by what singer?





5. Talking about singers, Frank Sinatra said, “Sammy’s words fit my mouth the best.” Whom is the Sammy refer to?





6. Who was the first president to be inaugurated in Washington D.C.?





7. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a staff





of how many staff  members?





   A)  800  B) 1,300  C) 1,800   D) 2,200 E) 2,800





8) What is the longest river in Europe?





9) To what state in the United States would you





    have to go to in order to visit the Motorcycle





    Hall of Fame Museum?





10) On March 10, 1876 , who said “Mr. Watson –Come here—I want to see you.” Why is the





sentence significant to United States history?





11.  During the Civil War, Union soldiers sometimes resorted to eating Skillygalee to





gain nourishment. What is Skillygalee?





12.  What U.S. city is the only city to be ranked no. 1 as





“The Best Place to Live in America” more than once?





13. In 1949, the very first cartoon made especially for





       television made its appearance. What was the title





       (it is the name of the series’ main character)?





14. Who was the first black American actor to amass a million dollars, much of that fortune  made possible by





his work in films at major Hollywood studios?





15. What word means to cheat by cunning or daze with tricks. According to one dubious etymology, It is a gypsy word meaning to dress a man in bamboos to  teach him swimming. Like the bladders used for the same purpose by little-wanted boys the apparatus is dangerous and deceitful?





16, “Gangway! Gangway for de Lawd God Jehovah.”





According to drama critic John Mason Brown, ‘The modern theatre has produced no entrance cue better known or more affectionately remembered. These are words which even when read makes the heart stand still.” What 20th century play is Mr. Brown referring to?





17. This Academy Award winning actor in 1966, the son of





        Milton Matuschanskayasky , described himself as the





        “Ukranian Gary Grant”?





18. What particle, a quantum of light, carries energy proportional to the radiation frequency but has zero rest mass?





19. The NFL Minnesota Vikings placekicker Fred Cox





created the Nerf Football. NERF is actually an acronym. What do the initials stand for?





20. The long-playing musical album “CALYPSO” is said to be the first album by a single artist to sell more than a million copies. Who was the singer?





ANSWERS:





1. A (clam, named Ming by the scientists who studied him).





2. Justin Verlander, Nolan Ryan, Bob Feller, Sandy Koufax, and Cy Young





3. The Great Pretender is a disorder that mimics real disorders, thus puzzling doctors and medical specialists..





4. Freddy Mercury. On Youtube, Freddy Mercury’s music video of “The Great Pretender”





is the official version of the song.





5. Sammy Cahn, song writer.





6. Thomas Jefferson





7. D (2,200)





8.  The Volga (2,190 miles long)





9.  Ohio (Pickerington, Ohio)





10. Alexander Graham Bell. He was transmitting the world’s first telephone message. Thomas Watson was his assistant.





11. Skillygalee was hardtack (very hard crackers)





  soaked in water, then fried in pork fat.





12. Nashua, New Hampshire (1987 and 1998)





13. Crusader Rabbit





14.  Lincoln Perry (1896-1985). His movie name





        was Stepin Fetchit.





15. Bamboozle





16. The Green Pastures by Marc Connelly





17. Walter Matthau. He said, “Doing a play is like eating a seven-course meal, but a movie is like eating a lot of hors-d’oeuvres. You get filled up, but you’re never quite satisfied.”





18. Photon





19.  NERF – Non-Expanding Recreational Foam





20. Harry Belafonte





(If you get 10 questions right, consider yourself a trivia mavin!)





For readers who enjoy off-beat/fun quizzes my collection of quizzes LA TRIVIATA (published by World Audience) is available from AMAZON.





THE NAME CHAIN GAME





 A name chain consists of a list of all-well known names with the last name





Forming the first name of the next person upon the list. The challenge is to





get from a given first name  to a predetermined last name in the fewest





possible moves, using well-known names from real or fiction.





    For example: Can you get from BOY GEORGE to GORDON LIGHTFOOT in 4 moves’





         1. BOY GEORGE





         2.______________________________





         3. _______________________________





         4  GORDON LIGHTFOOT





one solution:





          BOY GEORGE





          George Herman “Babe” Ruth





          Ruth Gordon





          GORDON LIGHTFOOT





Now can you get from The Lone Ranger to Edgar Allan Poe?










**





Answer to epitaph question: Mel Blanc (1908-1989). He provided the voice for numerous animated characters, such as Bugs Bunny & Sylvester the Cat.










HESTER PRYNNE GIVES THIS SITE AN A RATING





OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA






	


	





	

		
BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE # 3
	


	
	

		

BLOG #3





  After he reads his own humorous poem, the late Victor Buono sits down with Johnny Carson and  reads a poem  I wrote about my grandmother. Victor had played the lead in my play THE LAST OF THE
MARX BROTHERS WRITERS.
 






https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXl_-yaIhbM








Attachments area







Preview YouTube video JOHNNY CARSON INTERVIEW VICTOR BUONO Jan 13 1978







JOHNNY CARSON INTERVIEW VICTOR BUONO Jan 13 1978





**





INFAMOUS MOMENTS IN THE HISTORY OF PUBLISHING






London Daily News (September 30, 1915) publishes a story about the prosecution of THE RAINBOW by D.H. Lawrence by the Public Morality Commission. See also   The London Times for 15 November 1915 . Headline reads:





OBCENE NOVEL TO BE DESTROYED – WORSE THAN ZOLA





For the British, Zola and many French novels must have represented the depths of depravity. In any case, from 1915 until 1926 THE RAINBOW remained out of print.





**





We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.





                             Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859)










Humor –Latin – (h)umovem –flood, moisture. “When Shakespeare used humorous in Romeo and Juliet he meant damp. To speak of a ‘dry humor seems a bit paradoxical.





Margaret S. Ernst. In a Word (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1935)





**





A SAD EVENT IN ACADEMIC PUBLISHING





Typos are enough to disturb any writer, but suppose





a publisher does not even print the author’s name





correctly? Consider the book – A CONCORDANCE OF
WALT WHITMAN’S LEAVES OF GRASS AND SELECTED PROSE WRITERS by Harold Edwin Eby (University of Washington Press, 1949). The book contains this note:





ERRATA: The authors name on the cover & title page should read





                        EDWIN HAROLD EBY





**





Selections from my collection of epigraphs





All the lives we could live, all the people we will never know, never will be, they are everywhere. That are everywhere. That is what the world is.





Aleksander Hemon . The Lazarus Project.





Epigraph to Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann (New York: Random House, 2009)





‘Reptiles are abhorrent because of their cold body, pale color , cartilaginous skeleton, filthy skin, fierce aspect, calculating eye, offensive smell, harsh voice, squalid habitation, and terrible venom, wherefore their Creator





has not exerted his power to make many of them.”





            Linnaeus, 1797





“You cannot recall a new form of life.”





    Erwin Chargaff, 1972





Epigraphs to Jurassic Park  by Michael Chrichton





(Ballantine Books, 1991)





Notes to the above epigraphs:





Linnaeus (1707 – 1778)) was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, and physician who formalized binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming organisms. He is known as the “father of modern taxonomy”. (Wikipedia) So why the date of





1797? Linnaeus’s son  Carolus Linnaeus theYounger or Carl von Linné was  also a  naturalist, but he died in 1783  ( 1741 – 1783).





Erwin Chargaff (11 August 1905 – 20 June 2002) was an Austro-Hungarian biochemist who immigrated to the United States during the Nazi era and was a professor of biochemistry at Columbia University medical school. Through careful experimentation, Chargaff discovered two rules that helped lead to the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA.  (Wikipedia)





“Jesus calls those who follow him to share his passion.





How can we convince the world by our preaching of the   passion when we shrink from that passion in our own lives?”





            Dietrich Bonhoeffer





One man will leap into the holy fire,





Unfailing in his mission, unafraid.





He travels light, now driven by desire





From sundown into dawn, from pyre to pyre.





              Ion of Chios





Epigraphs to The Damascus Road: a novel of Saint Paul by Jay Parini (New York: Doubleday, 2019)





  Robin Hood is here again; all his merry thieves





Hear a ghostly bugle-note shivering through the leaves…





The dead are coming back again, the years are rolled away





         In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.





                                  Alfred Noyes





Epigraph to The Adventures of Robin Hood by Roger Lancelyn Green (New York; Puffin, 2010)





How sad that we have no memories of our mother’s milk or our first sight of the world, through eyes made blurry by the tears we shed for milk…





   Sait Faik Abasiyanik, Milk





Epigraph to Milk by Mark Kurlansky (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018).





**





For the whole earth is the tomb of famous men; not only are they commemorated by columns and inscriptions in their own country, but in foreign lands there dwells also an unwritten memorial of





Them, graven not on stone but in the hearts of men.





   Pericles on the Athenian dead





From Thucydides’s  History of the Peloponnesian War





Epigraph to Out of Darkness, Shining Light by





Petina  Gappah (New York: Scribner,2019)





*********************************************





  EPITAPH FOR A GRAMMARIAN





  Holt was once the past tense of hold.





  The person beneath this stone





   Is the past tense of everything.





  LJP





**





      WHY SHAKESPEARE WOULD NOT SUCCEED IN TODAY’S THEATER





  Being a series of letters between an aspiring playwright and a dramaturg (or recent college graduate):





 March l9, l987





Dear Mr. Shakespar:





   Thank you for sending us your play –HAMLET, or THE PRINCE OF DENMARK to the Workshop To Death Theater.  I am returning it to you, because, as we have announced repeatedly in the Dramatists Guild Quarterly, our theater no longer accepts unsolicited manuscripts.





  If you wish, however, you may send us a short synopsis of your play, a cast list, scene breakdown, and a page of sample dialogue. We shall then tell you if we wish to read the entire script. We then give a reading of your script to an invited audience and, from there, we begin rewrites.





Sincerely,





Belevedere W. (Ph.D.)





Dramaturg





***





June l5 , l988





Dear Mr. Shokespare:





         Thank you for your letter and for sending The Workshop to Death Theater a synopsis and sample dialogue from your full-length play HAMLET or THE PRINCE OF DENMARK. I’m sorry to take so long to get back to you.





    Frankly we think you’ve tried to cram too much into your play and some of the action makes no sense.





  You write, and I quote from your synopsis: ” Two soldiers walking on a tower see a ghost and get frightened.  A young student of philosophy returns home to find that his father has been murdered and that his mother (Gertrude) has married the Prince’s Uncle.  The Prince pretends to go mad and then he kills the Uncle’s advisor, the father of the Prince’s girlfriend Ophelia. Ophelia then goes mad and drowns herself. Then strolling players come to the castle to act out yet another play…”





  I know there is more to your synopsis, but, frankly, that is all we need to know that the play is not for us. Too confusing. Just who are all these people? Where does the ghost come from? Are Hamlet and Ophelia having a relationship or they just sleeping together? Do you know what Hamlet et. al. do when they are not on stage?





Also the page of dialogue you sent us (although it exhibits a certain interest in language) is too too wordy. Cast size too large.





   We, therefore, cannot encourage you to send this script. Do you have something more simple? More conventional? Our audiences are quite traditional.  Try to think of a play whose synopsis gives us a true feeling of what you are about and we’ll be happy to consider it for our impromptu reading program.





Sincerely,





Belvedere Whiplash





Dramaturg





***





April,l2 l989





Dear Mr. Shakespeare:





  Thank you for your letter of Dec. l988, and for your synopsis of King Lear.





Unfortunately, The Whiplash Theater, formerly the Workshop to Death Theater, has undergone significant changes, and we now only read half-page synopses submitted through an agent.





    If you do not have an agent, I suggest you consult Literary Marketplace or the annual listings in the Dramatists Guild Quarterly.





  We are particularly interested in one set, small cast comedies, with a runnng time of eight minutes or less. That way we can cram l0 new playwrights into a single program and, thus, improve our chances for funding.





Sincerely,





Carl Brandenberg





Playreader





***





Feb. 21, l990





Dear Mr. Steelingham:





  Sorry to be so tardy in responding to your submission of a half-page synopsis of A COMEDY OR ERRORS by your client Bill Shakespeare.  The play sounds very clever, although a few of us were confused by just how many sets of identical (or even Siamese) twins are needed to stage the piece.  When your client writes that ” Identical twins are separated at birth in a storm at sea” –he doesn’t make it clear whether or not he wishes that





scene to be staged.  Our resources for staging storm scenes are quite limited. Also, the page of dialogue seems more prosey than other pages I have read from your playwright.





  But even if we could make heads or tails of the synopsis, we still couldn’t ask to see the entire script because our schedule is filled up for the next two years. We are concentrating on small cast musicals and revivals of Broadway hits.





Sincerely,





Joan Makepeace





Associate Director, New Play Series





***





MAy l2, l990





Dear Mr. Shakespeare:





  Thank you for sending the Death to Audiences Theater a  three sentence synopsis of your comedy MEASURE FOR MEASURE. Sounds like it lends itself to a musical. We are interesting in hearing more about it. Could you please





send us every other page of the script.





   We also charge a $l0.00 reading fee. $25.00 if you wish a written critique.





  Sincerely yours,





Meyers Oberhoffer





Husband to the Producer





***





 At this point there are no more letters in the file. We, alas, regret we have none of the responses from the playwright.





***





Louis Phillips

	


	





	

		
BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE #2
	


	
	

		






                 The Incredible Shrinking Author










Please keep these words in your sight at all times. If you look away, who knows what might happen?





****





What do you see in The Marquis de Sade?  Beats me!





What’s the difference between 16.5 feet and a former New York Yankee all-star 3rd baseman?





NO DIFFERENCE AT ALL. BOTH ARE A ROD.





New item on the U.S. Congress Dining Rooms: SQUID PRO QUO, served with side dish of dirt on Biden.





**















ON THE MUSICAL PAL JOEY





I advanced the theory at the
time that immorality on the stage is perfectly acceptable as long as isn’t
accompanied by popular music.





Wolcott Gibbs






  
 IRISES

 
 What we did, where we were,
 Who we were then,
  
 I no longer remember,
 & every so often names escape me,
  
 But your face remains firm
 Where once my heart beat wildly,
  
 Remembering your wide skirt,
 Your smile
  
 That made days open & close,
 So today I bring  these words
  
 Opening & closing, closing &
 Opening. I bring them to you
  
 Because the flower lady
 On our corner
  
 Had sold out the irises
 Which you love so much. 





*****





Had sold out the irisesOn our corner





NEWSWEEK & GLOBAL WARNING IN 1952





Comman des Courtland J.W. (Jim) Simpson of the Royal Navy “who visited Greenland with a Danish expedition in 1950, has a hunch that ‘in a thousand years, probably tens of thousand years’ the vanishing ice will raise the world’s sea level by 16 feet,thereby flooding most seaports.





             Newsweek    July 14, 1952





SALVATION





…when he  (WILLIAM HICKEY) does show contempt , it is withering; those Portuguese sailors, for instance, who panic-stricken in a storm at sea, scrambled for a crucifix brandished by a priest, and tore it to pieces, are not called cowards or fools or knaves, but ;’miserable enthusiasts’; while they were trying to save their souls, their more stout-hearted fellows were trying to save the ship.





William Plomer. Electric Delights (  Boston: David R. Godine, 1978)





BOOK RECOMMENDATION:  WHEN I AM ITALIAN by Joanna Clapps Herman










Beats Me!





SELF-PORTRAITS





“No matter what you do, you can act your heart out, but people
will always say, ‘Oh, Julie Adams — “Creature From the Black Lagoon.” ’ ”





Julie Adams





I’m sometimes kind of jealous of my work. It
keeps





Getting all the attention and I’m not. After
all, I wrote





It.





      
John Ashbery





 I’m the foe of moderation, the champion of
excess. If I may lift a line from a die-hard whose identity is
lost in the shuffle, ‘I’d rather be
strongly wrong than weakly right’.

          





              
Tallulah Bankhead





From the experiments I have made, I fear I am a
non-conductor of friendship, a not-very-likeable person.





                    Thomas Lovell Beddoes





So I’m ugly. So what? I never saw anyone hit
with his face.





               Yogi Berra





  I
am as dispassionate as it is possible for a human being to be and not be a
machine.





    
Richard Burton





  It
is certain that I am not a great man, but I have an enthusiastic love of great
men,





  And
I derive a kind of glory from it.





          
James Boswell





On Monday the Post  bought the story for  three thousand and threw in a hymn of
praise  from Rust Hills in case I should
be feeling lonely and insecure. (WILLIAM) 
Maxwell  not only said I was a
writing machine; he said that I was his story machine. No diminishment was
intended. The original comparison was to a tomato plant.





  
John Cheever in a letter to
Josephine Herbst in





February  1952 in The
Letters of John Cheever,





Edited
by Benjamin Cheever (Simon & Schuster, 1988)





,





   I
have no money, no friends, and am hated by millions just because I always tell
the truth. What does that tell you about our society? I would definitely suck
as a politician.





         
Jose Canseco





Sometimes I feel like a has been who never
was.





            Sandra Dee





*****







 NOTICE  
 No animals have been harmed
 In the making of this couplet. 










BLOGS WORTH YOUR TIME: THE ART OF THE PRANK











	


	





	

		
BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE
	


	
	

		

Some bits & Pieces of A MISPLACED LIFE





Posted bylouisprofphillipsNovember 1, 2019Posted inUncategorizedEditSome bits & Pieces of A MISPLACED LIFE










In NYC, you know you are in a fashionable restaurant if there is mouthwash in the bathroom; I’m used to restaurant bathrooms that post the phone numbers of bail bondsmen.





There is no news like no news.





**





A POEM THAT IS 2 LINES SHORT 

OF A SONNET





In order





To prevent





The reader





From getting





Too excited





I have





Saved the





Most electric





Two words





Until now.





***





“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 the Whitneys 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)





***





                        RE: CONSIDERATIONS





     quotations, observations, thoughts, quips,





        & philosophical, literary,  historical,





                          & contemporary insights





                       Collected by Louis Phillips





ABORTION





President Bush was against abortion, but for capital punishment.  Spoken  like a true fisherman: Throw them back, kill them when  they’re bigger.





     Elayne Boosler





You accept the death of a six-year old child by aerial bombardment or economic sanctions and defend the life of a six-week old fetus. Think of it as taking the high road in Lilliput,





            Garret Keizer  Harper’s Magazine (February 2005)





 ABSTRACTION





   One can make the case that we have lost the capacity for abstract thought. When we read or listen to the radio, the mind forms images in response to the suggestion. the same thing can be said to occur when an illustration provokes the viewer by its symbolic relationship to reality. There are certain tribes in Africa that do not distinguish between their dream life and their daily life. We find ourselves in a similar condition. But on must note that the reality that television has provided us with does not serve our deepest needs.





   Milton Glaser





ABSURD/ABSURDITY





   In order to attain the impossible one must attempt the absurd.





     Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936)





ACADEMICS/ ACADEMIA





     A character in a novel some years ago described academics as merely  “reviewers delivering their copy a hundred years late.’ This is no longer the case: nowadays they’re jostling the freelancers out of the weekly literary pages.





           Julian Barnes





Introduction to  Reliable Essays: The Best of  Clive James (Picador, 2001)





**





Who killed James Joyce?





I, said the commentator,





I killed James Joyce





For my graduation.





Patrick Kavanagh, from “Who Killed James Joyce?”





The academic community is composed largely of nitwits. If I may generalize. People who don’t know very much about what matters very much, who view life through literature rather than the other way around…In my fourteen or sixteen years in the profession, I’ve met more people that I did not admire than at any other point in my life. Including two years in the infantry, where I was the only guy who could read.





Robert B. Parker, author of the SPENSER mystery series





**





  On November 16, 1980, the French philosopher Louis Althussen strangled his wife Helene. In reviewing Althussen’s book –





The Future Lasts Forever — George Steiner





Told his readers that “The doctor came and gave Althussen an injection in Althussen’s study. “Someone (I do not know who) was removing books I had borrowed from the





Ecole Library.” This is a Shakespearean touch





unendurably exact in its intimation of academic personalities. What is mere homicide compared with unreturned library





books.”





See The New Yorker (February 21, 1994)





…I have lectured on campuses for a quarter of a century, and it is my impression that after taking a course in The Novel, it is an unusual student who would ever want to read a novel again.





                             Gore Vidal





ACCOUNTING





“I’m so glad you’re not a teacher,” he said. “They never seem real somehow…An accountant’s is a sensible yet glamorous occupation. He made Homer sound like balance sheets and balance sheets like Homer…”





from ROOM AT THE TOP by John Braine





ACTING (see also FILM ACTING)





The mortar between the bricks.
     





Beulah Bondi, describing what character actors are, quoted by Anthony Slide, “The Character Player” in Films in Review (March 1990)





 At the end of the play I had to explain to the audience –as I build the church all in mime – that I’ve been told by God to wheel my mother in a barrow all over England….and I’d been wheeling this fragile old lady all over the stage…until God told me to stop at this mound (on the stage) and build a church. Finally we stop, and I build the church – I and the audience have to imagine it, As I tell the villagers in the play how it happened, I could feel the absolute stillness of the audience. The atavistic hairs on the back of the back of my neck roe and I thought: what an extraordinary feeling, That was the first time I felt a sense of the power of acting, of being the medium through which the emotions of he words could be felt. That’s when I thought I’ll go on with it.





 Richard Burton, on acting in Christopher Fry’s The Lady’s Not For Burning. Quoted by Hollis Alpert in Burton.





**





I try not to play characters that ever have ever have any self-awareness that their conviction is boneheaded. And I think that can either be funny or dramatic. After all, a character doesn’t know whether they’re in a comedy or a drama.





 Steve Carell, in an interview with Ana Marie Cox  New York Times Magazine (December 6, 2015)





I don’t care if people think I’m an overactor. People who think that would call Van Gogh an overpainter.





Jim Carrey





I remember  during one of the first days of the shooting, as his (RONALD COLMAN’S) portable dressing room was next to mine. I could hear much of what was said in his: the door was open and he was being interviewed





By an earnest and rather awed young lady. She asked him what he thought was the most important thing for an actor to retain, and he said, after only a moment’s pause, “His amateur enthusiasm.”





Celeste Holm, quoted in Ronald Colman: A Very Private Person by Juliet Benita Colman





(William Morrow & Co. l975).





To impersonate a really bad actor takes a really good actor.





   Lloyd Evans





The first day  I rehearsed with him (TYRONE GUTHRIE) he spotted me marking my script and immediately demanded to know what I was doing. “Marking in the move you’ve just given me, Mr. Guthrie.” “Don’t,” he said. “Waste of time. If I’ve given you a good move you’ll remember it; if bad, you’ll forget it and we’ll think up another.”  I have never marked my script since





   Joe Leberman says to the method actors: “When I appeared in the crowd scene in Julius Caesar, I stood downstage right in extreme profile. I cried only with my right eye. No sense wasting tears that the audience couldn’t see.”





            quoted by Judith Malina in her Diaries





**





Acting is a lot of damned hard work. It’s not just the physical exhaustion, but little things like having to play





a whole scene with your nose itching, or doing a long violent speech when you have indigestion, or wanting to raise your eyes suddenly only to find yourself blinking into a thousand-watt bulb,





     Sir Laurence Olivier





Saturday Review (March 8, 1952)





**





I took  up acting because it let me burn off energy. Besides, I wanted to beat the 40-hour-a week rap. But, man I didn’t escape. Now I am working 72 hours a week. So there you go.





Steve McQueen in Life (July 12, 1963)





   To me, there’s something that happens in  your head early in the day when you know that, later that night, you’ve got to perform the role, the whole role. You’re not  doing a minute of it or three minutes, like you do in a movie. You taxi to the end of the runway and you take off, you know what I mean? There’s no returning. You’re on. It does something to your adrenaline. It changes your chemistry.





   Al Pacino





Interviewed by Rick Lyman, NY Times (April 20,2003)





**





You can’t play psychiatric conditions and any actor knows that when a director says “Be more angry,’ you think that’s meaningless.





But to play a scene as if the character has some kind of mental fog that has descended and clouded his thinking, that gives you a range of things to work with. So you haven’t got to actually explore the psychiatry of the character to reveal it.





Geoffrey Rush, discussing playing David Heliflott in Shine





Paul (Newman) slaves at acting. He studies scripts for hours and doodles all over them. I like doing things subconsciously and bring them forth full-bloom. If I did as much thinking about a part as Paul does, I’d go raving mad.





  Joanne Woodward in Life (July 5, 1963)





**





CLERIHEWS by LOUIS PHILLIPS





***





FODOR DOSTOEVSKY





Fodor Dostoevsky





Did not advertise Have Skis





Will Travel





It was just something I read in a novel.





**





GEORGE ORWELL





Eric Blair,





As you may be well aware,





Was the birthname of George Orwell.





I just give the facts. Farewell!





**





EZRA POUND





Ezra Pound





On his keyboard found





The symbol #





& when he learned what it meant, he cursed %^&&#.





**Posted bylouisprofphillipsNovember 1, 2019Posted inUncategorizedEditSome bits & Pieces of A MISPLACED LIFE





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