WHEN JIM HENSON (1936-1990)
 GOT HIS FIRST TELEVISION SET

“I was probably about thirteen or fourteen. I badgered my parents until we got one – I mean, it was a real campaign. We bought as big as my cupped hands. I thought it was
Incredible. I still do. It is amazing to see a live picture that comes to you from somewhere else. I’ve always been in love with television.”

Interview with Jim Henson in GEO (January1983)
**
Cheers (1982-1993)

"It’s the place where everybody knows your name, and just about everyone in the country tuned in when Cheers aired the last of its 275 episodes. “One for the Road” received a Nielsen rating of 45.5, meaning 45.5% of all American televisions were tuned to the episode, with a total viewership of some 93 million. To this day, M*A*S*H is the only series finale to be seen by more people — even massive hits such as Seinfeld (76 million), Friends (52.5 million), and Game of Thrones (13.6 million) didn’t come close."

History Facts (May 25, 2024)
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzQVwnRrJjSMMnDhMFXGNCmHRlzl
**

"You can learn more about America by watching one half-hour of Let's Make a Deal than you can by watching you can by watching Walter Cronkite for a month."
             Monty Hall
**
WRITING FOR TELEVISION FROM THE EARLY 1950’s to the 1970’s

“Minimum payment  for a low-budget half hour television script was $650 in 1953 and $2,144.00 by the seventies. There are also residual payments for reruns, but with over three thousand members enrolled in the Writers Guild West, one need not consult a pocket computer to figure out how many would be starving if everyone relied  on full-time work.”

Gary Grossman. Superman:  Serial to Cereal (New York:
Popular Library, 1977)

**

A PSYCHIATRIST WHO WORKED AT ST. ELIZABETH'S
HOSPITAL IN WASHINGTON., D.C. TELLS A STORY TO OSCAR LEVANT ABOUT EZRA POUND 

"...while he was there, Pound won the Bollingen Prize for poetry. It was a cash award of a thousand dollars. All the patients became very excited; they thought Pound would use part of the money to buy them a televidsion set. Pound refused."

Oscar Levsant. The Unimportance of being Oscar (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1968)
**
SAMUEL JOHNSON & TV COMMERCIALS

"Only a man seated before a television set watching a cigarette carton perform a tap dance can extract the full relish from Dr. Samuel Johnson's pronouncement of nearly two hundred years
ago: 'The trade of advertising is now so near to perfection that it is not easy to propose any improvement.'"

 E.S. Turner.The Shocking History of Advertising (New York: E.P.Dutton & Company, 1953)

**
FAVORITE LINE OF DIALOGUE 

Perhaps my favorite line from a TV series is
from John Le Carre's The Night Manager. A man passes
a room where the door is open. He peers in and sees a
nude woman seated on a bed and she is crying. He
discreetly moves on. The next day he meets the woman 
and he tells her that he had seen her in her room when she
was crying. She says: "I do not care who sees me naked; I
care who sees me cry."
                                        LJP
**

John Glenn, America's first astronaut., appeared on the television show "Name That Tune" in 1957 and won $25,000.
**

"Years ago, one day in his room at King's College, Cambridge, E.M. Forster said to me: 'My furniture rather let me down when the television people came."
                      V.S. Pritchett

**

AFTER TELEVISION, THE INTERNET 

“ Television was just radio with pictures – visual radio. No one saw it for what it became: the most powerful instrument of social transformation in the latter half of the 20th century.”
                          Todd Brewster in Life (January 1999)
**
       
ON STARS IN TV SIT-COMS

“ With sitcoms, audiences don’t want to think that their favorite personalities as acting at all: that’s why Lucille Ball played a character called Lucy, Mary Tyler Moore played a character called Mary, and today Roseanne and Roseanne.”
                   Mark Stein in The Spectator (December 1995)

**

NOEL NEILL PLAYING LOIS LANE ON TV'S
SUPERMAN SERIES

"Noel  Neill had never read a Superman comic book,
never had heard of the radio show nor had seen the'
movie serials when she took over the part of 'Lois Lane' 
on the TV series. In the comic strip,' Lois Lane' was a
brunette. Ms.Neill is a redhead."
  "...Says Noel of the character she portrayed, 'Lois
Lane' was a strange type of reporter. She never carried
a pencil or notebook, never wrote a thing, never saw a
press.'"

Richard Lamparski. Whatever Became Of....? Seventh in
the series of Whatever Became of....? Books (New York:
Bantam Books, 1977)

**

TV PERSONALITIES

Jackie Gleason
Was very rarely the voice of reason.

Wally Cox
Was not built like an ox.

DREAMING OF BARBARA FELDON

In my dreams, Barbara Feldon
Told me if I felt one
Of her breasts, I should feel the other.
Just the woman I wanted to take home to mother.

WALT WHITMAN READING "AMERICA"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZvdKjKL7hQ


W.H. AUDEN ON GIVING POETRY READINGS & LECTURES 
ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES

Spirit is willing to repeat
Without a qualm the same old talk,
But Flesh is homesick for our snug
Apartment in New York.

from  "On the Circuit"
**
"As someone said, when T.S.Eliot was young his poems were middle-aged, when he was middle-aged his poems were old, and 
when he was old his poetry was posthumous."

Oscar Levant. The Unimportance of Being Oscar (New York:
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1968)

**

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN POETRY & PROSE, ACCORDING TO BRENDAN BEHAN

Brendan Behan was once invited to Oxford to take part
in a debate about the difference between prose and
poetry. His opponent spoke for almost two hours. Behan
rose to his feet and promised to be brief. He recited an old
Dublin rhyme:

There was a young fella named Rollocks
Who worked for Ferrier Pollocks.
As he walked on the strand
With a girl by the hand
The water came up to his ankles.

"That," declared Behan, "is prose. 
But if the tide had been in, it would've been poetry." 

Brian McDevitt
Glenties, Co Donegal

in IRISH INDEPENDENT
https://www.independent.ie/opinion/letters/brendan-behans-ability-to-be-succinct-was-out-on-its-own/40769558.html
**

OF POETRY AND  KITING CHECKS or WHAT IS A RHYME FOR FORGERY
 
    The following item appeared in Time magazine’s Miscellany
For January 6, 1958:
 
        In Jersey City , Samuel Silverman, 22, in jail
Awaiting trial on a check forgery charge, casually scribbled a verse that police promptly confiscated as evidence:
 
              I bounced a check,
              A cop bounced me.
              The Judge said, “Son,
              You’ll do about three.”
**
 
A POETRY READING I AM GLAD I MISSED

"The incident of the audience member screaming at the Ilkley festival when Cave Birds was performed (Other Lives, 18 September) is recollected by Philip Larkin in a June 1965 letter to Robert Conquest: “At Ilkley festival, a woman shrieked and vomited during a Ted Hughes reading. I must say that I’ve never felt like shrieking. We had the old crow over at Hull recently, looking like a Christmas present from Easter Island. He’s all right when not reading.” 

Graham Chesters
Chair, The Philip Larkin Society
**
 
ON TRYING TO FIND A RHYME FOR CLEOPATRA

To Cleopatra
I cried out: "O put Ra-
mses behind you." (At that time
I could not come up with a decent rhyme)

LJP
**

WHY ANGLO-SAXON POETRY IS UNRHYMED

"Anglo-Saxon poetry is unrhymed because the noise of the rowlocks does not suggest rhyme."
    Robert Graves

**
on WILLIAM LYON PHELPS TEACHING AT YALE

"The professor asked his students to discuss the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins' "sprung rhythm" technique. One young man handed in his exam reading, "Only God knows the answer to your question. Merry Christmas." Professor Phelps returned the paper after Christmas with the note, "Happy New Year. God gets an A—you get an F." 

Wikipedia
**

"I used to construe only Homer and Xenophone, but I have lately been put into Aeschylus."
                 Matthew Arnold at age 10
**
POETS & DOCTORS

"I have come to believe that it is flesh alone that counts. The rest is that which we distract ourselves when we are not hungry or cold, or in ecstasy. In the recesses of the body I search for the philosophers' stone. I know it is there, hidden in the deepest, dampest cul-de-sac. It awaits discovery. To find it would be like the harnessing of fire. It would illuminate the world. Such a quest is not without pain, who can gaze on so much misery and feel no hurt? Emerson has written that the poet is the only true doctor. I believe him, for the poet, lacking the impediment of speech with which the rest of us are afflicted, gazes, records, diagnoses, and prophesies."

Richard Selzer. Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976)


**

JOYSTICK

Poetry is not designed
To keep readers out,

Jump in & have a good time,
Wonders abound:

Talking ravens, naked giraffes,
A mariner haunted

By an albatross, evenings
Starched by moonlight,

Mansions with haunted rooms,
Slant rhymes

Odes, limericks for the asking
No joystick required

Louis Phillips


AVAILABLE FROM AMAZON

Best Kept Secrets of Mortality
by Louis Phillips 
4.0 out of 5 stars 
Paperback
$16.99

FAMILY PLANNING
__PLEASE USE REAR ENTRANCE
                sign at Barnstable (England)
                    HEALTH CARE CENTRE


**
"I'm Catholic. My mother and I were unpacking and
she found my diaphragm. I had to tell her it was a
bathing cap for my cat."
                         Liz Winstead
**
Stridulate (STRIH-jə-lait) Part of Speech Verb

Of an insect, especially a male cricket or grasshopper) Make a shrill sound by rubbing the legs, wings, or other  body parts. 

Reminds me of my the sexual techniques of members of my college fraternity,
**
ON READING D.H. LAWRENCE'S WOMEN IN LOVE

"I had read it at eighteen. I kept no diary that year, but I had no need of one to remind me that was the year I lost my virginity. It was all too apparent from the comments I wrote in my Viking edition (page 18: 'Violence substitute
for sex'; page 154: Sexual pain' ; page 159:  'Sexual power';
page 158: 'Sex' . "

Anne Fadiman. Ex Libfris: Confessions of a Common Reader (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998)

**

MEL BROOKS & DOING IT

"We all know girls who do it. But if you ask them to do it,
they say no. Why? Because they want to be proper. Finally, after thirteen years of courtship and dates and so on, one night they get drunk and they do it. And after they've done it, that's all they want to do. Now they're fallen, now they're disgraced, and all they want to do is to do it. You say, 'Let's have a cup of tea.' 'No, let's do it.' 'Let's go to the cinema." 'No, I'd rather do it.'"

Mel Brooks. Playboy Interview (February 1975)
**

**
ON LIP SYNCHING

“Osculate” originates from the Latin verb “osculari” (“to kiss”) and the noun “osculum” (“little mouth or kiss”). While a kiss between the happily married couple is often considered the romantic culmination of a modern wedding ceremony, ancient Romans viewed the practice more practically. Since literacy was not as widespread in this time, and historians speculate a kiss was a symbol of a mutual agreement, this action is likely what inspired the phrase “sealed with a kiss.” 

WORD DAILY (JUNE 27, 2024)
**
ENVYING MALE KALUTAS!

"Some animal species are also semelparous, for example, Pacific salmon die after spawning. Male kalutas, Australian marsupials, are also semelparous. As the NYT describes it: “During these brief, frenzied breeding seasons, male kalutas mate with several females -- for up to 14 hours at a time -- until they succumb to exhaustion and die.” Talk about going out with a bang!"

Anu Garg. Wordsmith (August 14, 2024)
**

SEX & THEATER

Once when I discussed sex with a beautiful actress, she told me how frightening it was, at least the first time. 'Yes,' I said, recalling my stage experiences, 'It's like New Haven, Philadelphia, and then New York."

Oscar Levant. The Unimportance of Being Oscar (Toronto: Longmans Canada, 1968)
**

ALIMONY SING ALONG

Sex & love,
Love & sex,
Remind me of
Lawyers & my ex.

**

from the poet J.R. Solonche

My favorite Delmore (SCHWARTZ) story is the time he chased a woman around his room shouting,”I’m a poet. I’ve got a big cock.”
**
"The man and woman make love, attain climax, fall separate. Then she whispers, "I'll tell you who I was thinking of if you tell me who you were thinking of."
                                 Gore Vidal
**

HOW TO INJURE YOUR NOSE

In the movie Chinatown, Jack Nicholson's character J.J.Gittes is asked by a police detective how he injured his (prominently bandaged) nose.   His answer was:

A -- I stuck it where it didn't belong
B -- A sex-starved Eskimo rubbed too hard
C -- I was auditioning to play of Pinocchio
D -- Your wife crossed her legs

You no doubt know the right answer.
**

O FLESH, FLESH

"O flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified" 
                 Romeo and Juliet, act 2, scene 4

Up to my eyeballs
With red herrings.
My imagination flounders,
So many ideas playing me
Like a ocean of rorshach tests
With secret answers,
Small fish in nets.

Fly fisherpersons 
Allow their lines go slack,
Then taut, like a poem in progress.

Trout-eyed, I am hooked but good
By women & poetry:
O  my sole! My soul
As for Love
How eagerly I enter that stream.

Louis Phillips

“Peanuts” Was the First Major Comic Strip to Feature a Minority Character

Schulz was intentional about a lot of things when it came to how he framed his famous comic strip, but most especially when it came to race. The majority of the Peanuts gang had always been white, mostly because the cartoonist felt unsure as to whether it was his place to include minority characters in his story lines. But things changed in 1968 following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Schulz received a letter from a woman asking him to add an African American character to the comic, and three months later, in July 1968, Franklin made his comic strip debut, picking up and returning a beach ball that Charlie Brown had lost.
Critics have noted that Franklin is more nondescript than his white counterparts, but Schulz’s longtime friend and fellow cartoonist Robb Armstrong once said that he thought Schulz “played it smartly” with Franklin. “He was always very thoughtful in how he treated his characters,” Armstrong told NPR in 2018. And in fact, Schulz actually dedicated Franklin’s last name to Armstrong after the pair developed a friendship that lasted until Schulz’s death in 2000. Armstrong is the creator of JumpStart, one of the most widely syndicated Black comic strips ever."

INTERESTING FACTS (August 11,2024)
**
WORDSMITH on the word GRAWLIKS

(GRAW-liks)  

MEANING:
noun: The characters, such as @#%$*!, used to convey profanity in a comic.
ETYMOLOGY:
Coined by the cartoonist Mort Walker (1923-2018). Earliest documented use: 1964.
USAGE:
“This title contains ... negligible cursing (sometimes represented as a grawlix).”

Adult Books 4 Teens; School Library Journal (New York); Mar 2019.
**
I was a religious reader of every comic in both The Daily News and The Daily Mirror throughout high school. So much so that when I went off to the University of Virginia, my mother would cut out the strips every day, put them in order along with the complete Sunday comic sections and mail them to me every Monday for all of my college years. I didn't detoxify from my comic addiction until I began my film career, in Greece of all places.

Nelson Breen, Emmy Award Winning Film-maker

**

THE GIRL WHO INSPIRED LOIS LANE

 An October 29, 1975, article in The Washington Star by John Sherwood claims that Lois Lane was named after Lois Amster, a Cleveland girl whom Joe [Shuster] had a crush on. She was not even aware of his existence. 'She's a grandmother now in Cleveland, ' says Joe, 'but I don't think she has any idea that she was the inspiration for Lois Lane.'

DELANCY PLACE COM. (APRIL 11, 2024).
**

ZASU PITTS & OLIVE OYL

"When the comic strip "Thimble Theatre" became the animated series "Popeye", the producers used Pitts' hand-wringing and nervous speech pattern to characterize the on-screen persona of Olive Oyl."

iMDb TRIVIA

**

E.C. SEGAR'S POPEYE & THE WORD GOON

"Practically everyone read Popeye the Sailor frequently enough to feel almost as though friends of the sailor man were next-door neighbors. That was the case with a lumpy look hulk whom Segar called 'Alice the Goon' -- first drawn in 1919. 
       "It took only a few frames of sketches to learn that the Goon was tough as well as rough. Borrowing from the funny paper in the roaring Twenties, its devotees persuaded the world to call any hired thug a goon."

Webb Garrison. Why You Say It (New York: MJM Books, 1992)
**

BRENDA STARR, GIRL BANDIT

"Brenda Starr was originally created as a “girl bandit” character, but creator Dale Messick was encouraged to make the Rita Hayworth-esque Starr a reporter instead so that the Chicago/New York syndicate would pick it up. Not only that, but the creator was using a pen name: Knowing that the publisher had sworn off “women cartoonists,” Dalia Messick switched to the more male-sounding name Dale Messick professionally. But even after it was accepted, Brenda Starr, Reporter still got second-class treatment, at least initially — when it first published in 1940, Brenda was relegated to the Sunday comic book supplement rather than the daily paper. Luckily, Brenda was a star, and the strip was a success long after Messick stopped writing it in 1982.

From INTERESTING FACTS website  (September 29,2022)


OF COMICS & THE BIBLE

“In 1941 , he (Max Gaines)  produced Picture Stories from
the Bible, a fifty-cent, 232-page collection that as a contemporary put it, ‘strictly in the comic-book technique, yet with sensationalism left out.” Although the title first met a rocky reception, religious leaders, including Norman Vincent Peale, eventually endorsed it. Eight hundred thousand copies of the book were sold in two years, and it was read in over two thousand Sunday schools. Gaines may not have been as saintly as the figures his book portrayed (“I don’t care how long it took Moses to cross the desert, “I want it in three panels.”

Jeremy Dauber. American Comics : A History (New
York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2022)
**

TARZAN HELPS DEFEAT THE NAZIS

The Ape-Man has also been involved in international political chaos that includes fighting in World War I….
   “ The Ape-Man battled the Axis in another time, as Tarzan in another media – motion pictures. In the 1943 film Tarzan Triumphs, Nazis invade the jungle and Johnny Weissmuller’s Tarzan, after uttering that immortal line, ‘ Now, Tarzan make war!’ goes out and thrashes them.”

from Tarzan, Jungle King of Popular Culture by David Lemmo | 2016
**

SATIRISTS IN AFRICA

"...all over Africa, where satirists are often the boldest commentators on politics and vice. 'Cartoonists use visual imagery as a kind of mask, to conceal in order to reveal,' says Ganiyu Jimoh, a Nigerian cartoonist and scholar. He compares the wit and allusions in cartoons to the traditional masquerades in Yoruba culture, in which masked performers would ridicule the powerful. As an adage has it, 'Oba kii mu onkorin': the king does not arrest a satirist."

Political Cartoons in Africa: the king does not arrest a satirist." in The Economist (June 17th-23rd 2023)

**



**

VILLAIN WITHOUT EYEBROWS

"In All-Star Superman, it's revealed that Luthor has no eyebrows, likely a side effect of his baldness. He draws them on, which leads to a scene at the end of his spotlight issue where, after accidentally wiping off his left eyebrow, he draws it back on, but does so incorrectly due to lacking a mirror. This results in him giving Clark Kent an evil lecture about how he'll be remembered forever as the man who killed Superman, while he has a comically misshapen eyebrow that looks as if he's doing a Dreamworks Face."

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NoBrows
**
 T. CAMPBELL, Editor of Word Play and a Comic Book researcher told his blog followers on Sept. 9, 2024:

Last time, I mentioned New Fun #1 (1935) as a claimant to the title of “first comic book.” That means the first comic-book hero might be Jack Woods. Woods was a Texas Ranger surrounded by the kind of Mexican caricatures who shot “Carramba” (sic) and “Get heem!” His first comics adventure began even before page one of the comic—kicking off on the cover itself!

**

HOW ORPHAN ANNIE’S DOG GREETED
THE COMPOSER OF CARMINA BURANA

Arf,
Orff.

**
DAGWOOD & BLONDIE

The comic strip Dagwood & Blondie ––
I read it on Sunday, Monday,
Tues, Wednesday, Thurs, Fri, & Sat.
That’s that

TARZAN

King of the Jungle, Tarzan
Lived without cars and
TV, so he considered it just fine
To spend days swinging on a vine.

ROBERT RIPLEY

Robert Ripley
I followed him triply:
In newspapers, on radio, & TV. I thought
His oddities were wonderful: BELIEVE IT OR NOT.

Louis Phillips

for Mac

"If you asked me what I came into the world to do,I will tell you. I came to live out loud,"

Epigraph to Learning to Live Out Loud, by Piper Laurie (New York: Crown Archetype, 2011)
**
FROM A MORE WORLDLY PHILOSOPHER

"Well, let me quote once more from a worldly philosopher who had the knack of summarising human thought. I mean the prize-fighter John L. Sullivan. "Various candidates for the championship say they want this and they want that. But what they all really want is the good old dough."

William Lyon Phelps. As I like It (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1924)
**
"Stars, planets, people , and petunias: everything 
emits a special kind of radiation which, if it sticks around long enough, evaporizes into nothing."

                      Scientific American (Septemnber 2023)

**

"Only a part of what is perceived comes through the senses from the object: the remainder always come from within."
                          Matthew Luckiesh

epigraph to 36 Views, a play by Naomi Lizuka

**

J. L. AUSTIN ON LANGUAGE & ACTION

Yet, as Austin insisted, “when we examine what we should say when, what words we should use in what situations, we are looking not merely at words (or ‘meanings’, whatever they may be) but also at the realities we use the words to talk about”. And, he argued, the way we use words in fact changes reality. “When I say ‘I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth’ I do not describe the christening ceremony, I actually perform the christening”, he wrote; “and when I say ‘I do’ (take this woman to be my lawful wedded wife), I am not reporting on a marriage, I am indulging in it”. I am, in fact, “doing something rather than merely saying something”.

Review  of J. L. AUSTIN: Philosopher and D-Day intelligence officer 688pp. Oxford University Press. £30 (US $38.95).
M. W. Rowe in  How to do things with wars
"The life of the philosopher who ‘changed the whole idea of what language is’by Jane O’Grady in TLS (August 4, 2023)
**

WHAT IS BEAUTY

"To a toad, what is beauty? A female with two pop-eyes, a wide mouth, yellow belly and spotted back"
                                                Voltaire
**

JEAN PAUL SARTRE on NO EXIT
 
“…if relations with someone else are twisted, vitiated, then that other person can only be hell. Why? Because other people are basically the most important means we have in ourselves for our own knowledge of ourselves. When we think about ourselves, when we try to know ourselves, basically we use the knowledge of us which other people already have. We judge ourselves with the means other people have or have given us for judging ourselves. Into whatever I say about myself someone else’s judgment always enters. Which means that if my relations are bad, I am situating myself in a total dependence on someone else. And then I am indeed in hell.”

**
HOW WE MAY ANSWER THE QUESTION "WHAT AM I"

"When we ask ourselves, 'What am I?' we may answer 'I am a Man' but are concious that it's a silly answer because we don't know what kind of thing that might be; and finding the question silly we feel it's probably a silly question. We can't help asking it, hoewever, for natural curiosity makes us ask i all the time of everyone
else, and it would seem artificial to make ourselves the sole exxception, would indeed envelop the mental image of one self in a unique silence..."

Robert Bolt. Preface to A Man For All Seasons (New York: 
Vintage Books, 1990)


THREE THINGS ABOVE ALL ELSE

"People in the mid-18th century:  climate, government and religion. He was ahead of his time in putting climate first.  Peter Frankopan opens his new book with Voltaire's
comment and proceeds to show how all manner of natural disasters have shaped human history; not just floods and storms, but earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and crashing meteorites, too."

from an unsigned review of The Earth Transformed by
Peter Frankopan (The Economist, March 11, 2023)
**

"No matter how cynical you get, it's impossible to keep
up."
          Lily Tomlin

**

ON GOOD CRAFTMANSHIP

"It seems to me that if you are a good craftsman your principal concern should be to keep working. If you manage to do that your employers will have to pay you sooner or later exactly what you are worth. How could they avoid it?"

Buster Keaton 

Buster Keaton, with Charles Samuels . My Wonderful World of Slapstick (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1960)
**

"First say to yourself what you would be, and then do
what you have to do."
                                          Epicetius. Discourses

Epigraph to Ernest Hemingway's Selected Leters, 1917-1961, edited by Carlos Baker.
**

I AM IN DEBT, THEREFORE I EXIST 

"What am I? Am I the bulb that carries the light, or am I thelight of which the bulb is a vehicle?"   Joseph Campbell 

Oh, come off it, Joseh Campbell.
I've had it with allegories.
Am I the bulb?
Am I the light?
I'll tell you who I am:
When the Electric Company
Sends out its bill,
I'm the one
Who writes the check.  

Louis Phillips

the New Century Dictionary (1944)

PATTING RABBIT HASH
"In vaudeville, a brisk recitative accompanied by much patter and slapping of the hands on knees, hips, forearms, etc. in triple time."

Douglas Gilbert. American Vaudeville: Its Life and Time (New York: Dover Books, 1946)
**

MORPHIC RESONANCE
"A few years ago, morphic resonance was all the rage, This was the theory that if a cohort of Japaqnese schoolchildren learn by heart a poem in Japenese, on the other side of the world, then another cohort of people over here will find the same poem in English that much easier to memorize."                   

 Will Self (Observer, June 1996) 
**

The original words in this sentence  have been  cloned and have been replaced by their exact duplicates.
**

MOVIE ADVERTISING & THE DESTRUCTION OF LANGUAGE

"No industry did more to destroy the meaning of words. The follies are too familiar to need laboring here -- how the story of a couple of cowboys quarreling over a girl became an epic, the tale of a small-time 'hoofer' a deathless saga. Colossal, terrific, stupendous  -- these words became the small change of film advertising. A reservation was put on a whole series of other adjectives like throbbing, rending, tingling, pulsating, pounding, sizzling, scorching, stark, elemental, volcanic, and searing. No story was ever taken from life  -- it was ripped or torn from the mighty canvas of humanity."

E.S. Turner. The Shocking History of Advertising! (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1953)
**
TONTO REFERRING TO THE LONE RANGER

Re:  Kemo Sabe, I had heard years ago that it supposedly meant "He that is unknown". Sabe in Spanish means "known."  ?
                                Ivan Johnson
Google says:

What does Kemo Sabe mean? '
faithful friend'.
Derived from gimoozaabi, an Ojibwe and Potawatomi word that may mean 'he/she looks out in secret', it has been occasionally translated as "trusty scout" or "faithful friend".

Wikipedia says:

"In the 1930's, when the Lone Ranger show got its start, there was indeed a camp in the northern part of Michigan called "Ke Mo Sah Bee" and the name is reported to have stood for "trusty friend" or "trusty scout." Since the show got its start in Michigan, it seems logical that the name could have come from there."

OR
A respected researcher at the Smithsonian Institute claims that Kemo Sabe comes from the Tewa Indian dialect where "Kema" means "friend" and "Sabe" means "Apache." Another scholar claims that in the Yavapai Indian language the word "kinmasaba" means "one who is white."

OR

What does kemosabe mean in Spanish?
In English, it is considered a term of endearment for a friend or companion. Tonto called the Lone Ranger “Kemosabe”. In Spanish it is written “quien no sabe” which means “Who knows?”                        
 In Navajo kemosabe means “soggy shrub”.
**
In the Nick of Time

"During the 18th century, business owners would keep track of debts, interests, and loans on “tally sticks,” with notches carved on the wood. When you arrived to pay off your debt right before the next notch was carved, you had arrived 'in the nick of time.'"
https://www.wordgenius.com/outdated-phrases/Xr0yWBPAJQAG8w9c
**
SPAM (FOR UNWANTED EMAILS)

"While the term "spam" didn't originate in the realm of movies or television, its current meaning as unwanted mail did.
"In a classic Monty Python sketch, a group of Vikings incessantly repeats the word "spam" as they sing a menu that includes processed meat, drowning out all other conversation. The repetitive and overwhelming nature of this skit amusingly mirrored the flood of unsolicited emails in early online communication. Over time, the term evolved, transcending its comedic roots."

DICTIONARY SCOOP (February 3, 2024)
**
CUT TO THE CHASE
"This expression originated in the US film industry. Many early silent films used to end in chase sequences, and the first reference to the expression dates back to that era as a screen direction from Joseph Patrick McEvoy’s novel ‘Show Girl in Hollywood’, written in 1930: “Jannings escapes... cut to chase”. Of course, a single line in a script direction does not automatically become a phrase that is part of the language, and we can be fairly sure that McEvoy wasn’t the source of the figurative use of the phrase as it is used today. In fact, the ‘get to the point’ meaning emerged in February 1947, when the New England newspaper – The Berkshire Evening Eagle – printed the following: “Let’s cut to the chase. There will be no tax relief this year”.
Source: ECEnglish.com
WISE TRIVIA WEBSITE (Feb.3,2024)
https://www.wisetrivia.com/quiz/ZVI8lTM_NQAHVrBP?utm_source=daily&utm_campaign=daily-20240203
**
THE IMPORTANCE OF ADVERBS 

Suddenly
You enter a tunnel
Of  despond,
You travel endlessly
No end in sight, 

Tirelessly
You struggle
To save yourself
Or the self
You believe you were.  

Incredibly,
A spark flickers
Into flame.
Is it the sun rising?
At that moment you must 

Reach out
To grasp the light.
Bring it to your chest,
Hug the day
Gladly.

Louis Phillips
**]
Best Kept Se






Best Kept Secrets of Mortalityby Louis Phillips | Feb 14, 20244.0 out of 5 stars Paperback $16.99
You Earn: 17 pts Two-DayFREE delivery Mon, Sep 9

TV LISTING FOR SUEZ IN THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE (1986)

Suez••• (1938) - Tyrone Power, Loretta Young. Story 
based on the monumental effort to build the 
Panama Canal.

end of column item in The New Yorker (November 3, 1986)
**

WATCHING PATRICIA NEAL GRIN

"Watching Patricia Neal grin is like tasting ice cream for
the veryv first time."
Rex Reed in Conversations in the Raw
**
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S FLEA ROUTINE & KAY BALLARD

The classic flea routine that Chaplin performs in his 1952 film "Limelight" was taken verbatim from Ballard's cabaret act, an idea she had hired a young Mel Brooks to script for her.

iMDb Trivia for Kay Ballard
**
WATCHING ROMAN POLANSKI DIRECTING YVONNE FURNAUX IN REPULSION,
or arrogant director as God

"To maintain the film's tension, the director constantly
needled cast members, trying to maintain a low hum of resentment 
while the cameras were rolling.
  "Ms. Furneaux eventually complained to Michael Klinger, an
uncredited producer. 'Tell that little bastard to leave me alone,' she was said to have remarked.
  "When Mr. klinger confronted him, Mr.Polanski responded:
'Michael, I know she's a nice girl. She's too bloody nice.
She's supposed to be playing a bitch. Every day I have to 
make her into a bitch.'"

Alex Williams. "Yvonne Furnaux, 98, Actress Who Found Fame
With Fellini," obituary in The New York Times (August 5,2024)
**


THE CHARACTER OF COLONEL SAITO IN THE BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER KWAI

Colonel Saito was inspired by Major Risaburo Saito, who, unlike the character portrayed in this movie, was said by some to be one of the most reasonable and humane of all of the Japanese prison camp commandants, usually willing to negotiate with the P.O.W.s in return for their labor. Such was the respect between Saito and Lieutenant Colonel Toosey (upon whom Colonel Nicholson was based), that Toosey spoke up on Saito's behalf at the war crimes tribunal after the war, saving him from the gallows. Ten years after Toosey's 1975 death, Saito made a pilgrimage to England to visit his grave."

iDMb Trivia
**
THE FIRST GREAT WESTERN MOVIE STAR

Hart went on to become one of the first great stars of the motion picture Western. Fascinated by the Old West, he acquired Billy the Kid's "six shooters" and was a friend of legendary lawmen Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson. He entered films in 1914, and after playing supporting roles in two short films, he achieved stardom the same year as the lead in the feature The Bargain. Hart was particularly interested in making realistic Western films. His films are noted for their authentic costumes and props, as well as Hart's acting ability, honed on Shakespearean theater stages in the United States and England.Beginning in 1915, Hart starred in his own series of two-reel Western short subjects for producer Thomas Ince, which were so popular that they were supplanted by a series of feature films. Many of Hart's early films continued to play in theaters, under new titles, for another decade. In 1915 and 1916 exhibitors voted him the biggest money making star in the United States."
Wikipedia

THE WILLIAM S. HART MUSEUM IN SANTA CLARA, CALIFORNIA

The Hart Museum showcases Hart's personal belongings and art collection, while the park is home to a herd of American Bison, a vast picnic area, and a series of hiking trails.
**
LAURETTE TAYLOR, WHO PLAYED AMANDA IN THE ORIGINAL PRODUCTION OF TENNESSEE WILLIAMS' THE GLASS MENAGERIE, MAKES A SCREEN TEST

"She was so natural that you forgot she was acting. It was as if they had pulled some woman directly off the street and onto the stage. A screen test that Miss Taylor did for one of the major studios in Hollywood is included in Rick McKay's documentary Broadway: the Golden Age (2003). The performance is brilliant, but the studio turned her down because they didn't feel she was acting."
           Kaye Ballard

Kay Ballard, with Jim Hesselman. How I Lost 10 Pounds in 53 years (New York: Backstage Books, 2006)

The First Star Added to the Walk of Fame Belonged to Filmmaker Stanley Kramer

To get the Hollywood Walk of Fame off to a strong start and to drum up excitement, the creators made a sample walk in 1958, which included stars for Olive Borden, Ronald Colman, Louise Fazenda, Preston Foster, Burt Lancaster, Edward Sedgwick, Ernest Torrence, and Joanne Woodward. Although Woodward is often cited as the first recipient, the inaugural star laid at today’s Hollywood Walk of Fame belonged to director/producer Stanley Kramer (It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, The Defiant Ones, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner); it was laid on March 28, 1960, near Hollywood Boulevard and Gower Street. However, Kramer was soon only one among many — 1,558 stars were installed in just the first year alone."

Interesting Facts (August 9, 2024)
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzQVxtwrcnhsGqHRzNQjsVmgLVCT
**
WHO'S ON FIRST?

 In the film Arrival the alien creatures are nicknamed Abbott and Costello, who are the Bud and Lou (respectively).
**
MOVIE DIALOGUE

Whenever somebody in a movie says "Don't worry. Nobody's going
to get hurt." you know right away that somebody is going to get hurt
**
PLAYING ME 

Olivier, Barrymore, Brando
Threw up their hands:
“No way! Impossible.” 

Surrounded
By a supporting cast
Of thousands, 

Perhaps 10,000,
I auditioned
For the starring role.

Why shd I always be
The heavy?
Call Cary Grant!

Women
Seated in the front row
Rolled their eyes. 

I forgot my lines,
Stumbled over the good parts.
I cd not sing nor dance, 

Nor get a handle
On what
The Director wanted. 

Went home,
Reread the script.
Not much sex or violence. 

Many good laughs.
I demanded
That the ending Be changed.   

Louis Phillips 

THE IDES OF MARCH

" March 15 is too important a day to ignore. As the man who taught me to use a chainsaw said, it is immortalized 
by Shakespeare’s famous warning: “Cedar! Beware the adze of March."

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
MAR 16,2024
**
**

WALTER MATTHAU AT AGE 7 

" He became a voracious reader, and when he was young as seven years old he began reciting Shakespeare. He may not have comprehended what he was saying but was transfixed by the by the beauty and fluidity of the language and its contrast to the Lower East Side dreariness. Often, he recited out loud for hours at a stretch, in the privacy of the bathroom. 'There'd be one for four families,' he recalled, 'and I'd be in there until someone threw me out.'"

Rob Edelman and Audrey Kupferberg.  Matthau: a Life (New York: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2002)
**

VIRGINIA WOOLF & SHAKESPEARE

" In a letter to Thoby, she (WOOLF) writes, “I read Cymbeline just to see if there mightn’t be more in the great William than I supposed. And I was quite upset! Really and truly I am now let in to the company of worshipers — though I still feel a little oppressed by his — greatness, I suppose.” That tone again: worshipers, the oppression of greatness. One thinks of the mock-religious deference in Woolf’s “Orlando” when the heroine resists taking the divine name in vain: “Or was it Sh — p — re? (For when we speak names we deeply reverence to ourselves we never speak them whole.)”

from :"The curious connection between Shakespeare and Virginia Woolf" Marjorie Garber’s ‘Shakespeare in Bloomsbury’ traces the playwright’s powerful influence on Woolf and her circle.
Review by Dennis Duncan in THE WASHINGTON POST (September 30,2023)
**

CHARLES MACKLIN AS SHYLOCK

The eighteenth-century audiences were used to seeing a comic Shylock.y Samuel De WildeMacklin wanted a different path to playing this character. While Macklin did not return to Shakespeare's script exactly as it was written, he did make his own edits to his script that were much closer than Granville's text. Instead of portraying Shylock as the usual comic pantolone, he played him as darkly villainous, serious, and highly satirical. Next, rather than dress Shylock as a clown, Macklin researched his role. He studied Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews, and in the old testament. He learned that Italian Jews, especially from Venice, were known to wear red hats, so he took that as a basis for his costume. In seeking to portray Jews exactly how they looked, Macklin emphasised the notion of historical accuracy in costuming, which would later become an inherent feature of realism in the 19th century. Macklin did not merely "study" the Jews. According to Appleton, "he actually interacted with them in marketplaces and learned to gradually adapt their way of speech"

Wikipedia
**
HAMLET, the 1937 Version at the Old Vic

“In 1937, Olivier played Hamlet at the Old Vic.

“At one performance the most ‘dreadful’ thing happened during the duel . Laertes fell splendidly on his back, legs akimbo, but his codpiece burst open. He raised a downstage knee to hide his manhood from the audience and the play continued. The problem was next evening’s performance the very first scene on the battlements of Elsinor when the soldiers were expecting the ghost to appear.
“’What’ Marcellus asked , ‘Has this thing appeared again tonight?’ it was no good. The actors’ convulsed laughter brought the curtain down, long before the Crowing of the Cock.”

Tarquin Olivier. My Father Laurence Olivier (l992)

Gyles Brandreth. The Oxford Book of Theatrical Anecdotes(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020)
**


THE ONLY THING THAT PAYS IN THE THEATRE 

"Shakespeare found that the only thing that paid in the theatre was romantic nonsense, and that when he was forced by this to produce one of the most effective samples of romantic nonsense in existence -- a feat which he  performed easily and well -- he publicly disclaimed any responsibility for it pleasant and cheap falsehood by borrowing the story and throwng it in the face of the public with the phrase As You Like It." 
                              George Bernard Shaw
**

"To this dayI can't read King Lear, having had the advantage of studying it occasionally in school."
                               Alfred North Whitehead
**

TEEN-AGE BOYS IN WILLIAM GOLDMAN'S NOVEL
TEMPLE OF GOLD DISCUSS HAMLET

"Quite right," Zook said. "Yes. We have Man coming to grips with the one force he is unable to combat." 
  "What force is that?" Few asked.
  "The Air Force," I butted in, slapping my knee. "Get it? The..."
   They ignored me. "You see ," Zock went on, "Hamlet is equipped to handle almost every situation. He is brave; he is strong; he is brilliant. But then, whammy, comes this one problem he can't handle, and he's done for. How's that?"
   "Great," I said."Marvelous. It stinks."
    "What's wrong with it?"
   "Jesus Christ," I told him. "If you believe that, who do you put the blame on?"
 "Set me down," Zock said. Fee did. "Now," he continued, "Why
 do you have to blame somebody?"
 "Forty people are murdered in this play, for chrissakes. That's why."

William Goldman. Temple of Gold (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957)
**
          EVERYDAY MY ARIEL       

Everyday, my Ariel.        
I put the world behind me, but it shoot back,        
With one generation & the next,        
Light as sunlight thrushing,        
As thru the Spanish Cedars flash        
Comorants magnetic with their hooked beaks.       
Always a fitful cornucopia        
To take the breath away.        
I press my life to the jumping dayshine.       
What do I demand?        
More space? More freedom?        
Freedom to do what?
Hungering for magic,        
I stand on Prospero's Isle.        
Could I have been so wrong about my life?        
Far out on the ocean,        
Replenished & green,        
One anonymous sailor        
Fastens his shrouds.

Louis Phillips