"The private detective of fiction is a fantastic creation who acts and speaks like a real man. He can be completely realistic in every sense but one, that one sense being in life as we know it such man would not be a private detective. The things which happen to him might still happen to him, but they would happen as a result of a peculiar set of chances. By making him a private detective, you skip the necessity for justifying his adventures."
Raymond Chandler in a long letter about Philip Marlowe to D.J. Ibberson (19 april 1951) ** A SENTENCE TO FORGET
"No real lover of the standard between world-wars detective novel can resist a line lik like this from Blind Drifts: 'Guard the door please, Mr. Wilklias! Mr. McKenzie's murderer , Mrs. Edmonds' asasailant, the man whose hands the unlucky Seaver was as putty, is now in this room..'
Jon L. Breen, discussing the writer Clyde B. Clason, who created a character named Thocritus Lucius Westborough
** WILD BILL DONOVAN & SHERLOCK HOLMES
William J. (Wild Bill) Donovan "...looked up as I entered his office and said, 'Doctor Moriarty! He's the man I want
'Do I look as evil a character as Professor Moriarty in the Sherlock Holmes stories,' I asked.
Stanley P. Lovell. "Cloak and Dagger Behind the Scenes" in The Saturday Evening Post (March 3, 1962), p.3
**
AGATHA CHRISTIE AT HER KITCHEN SINK
'...some of my best plots come to me at the sink."
Agatha Christie, Standing at her kitchen sink, Wd think & write down what occured, her Thoughts,not on dishes, but on murder. **
A FICTIONAL CHINESE-AMERICAN DETECTIVE NOT NAMED CHARLIE CHAN
"James Lee Wong, known simply as Mr. Wong, is a fictional Chinese-American detective created by Hugh Wiley (1884–1968). Mr. Wong appeared in twenty magazine stories and a film series of six, the first five of which starred English actor Boris Karloff as Wong, the last with Chinese-American actor Keye Luke in the role, the first Asian lead.
"In his story "No Witnesses", Wiley describes Mr. Wong as six feet tall, educated at Yale University and "with the face of a foreign devil-a Yankee".[ In the stories he is an agent of the United States Treasury Department and lives in San Francisco."
Wikipedia
** THE ORIGIN OF THE TERM PRIVATE EYE
“In 1850, Allan Pinkerton founded the first American private detective agency; in advertisements, the company’s motto, “We Never Sleep,” was inscribed under a large, unblinking, Masonic-like eye, which gave rise to the term “private eye.””
Quote from Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann **
LOCARD'S EXCHANGE PRINCIPLE "Put simply, Locard's exchange principle is "with contact between two items, there will be an exchange." Twentieth-century forensic scientist Dr. Edmond Locard came up with this idea after observing that criminals will almost always bring something into the crime scene with them and leave something behind, providing valuable evidence to investigators."
"It is a truth universal acknowledged that a mystery writer must know how to kill people."
K.H. Page **
THE FINEST FORM OF FICTION
“There is no finer form of fiction than the mystery. It has structure, a story line and a sense of place and pace. It is the one genre where the reader and the writer are pitted against each other. Readers don’t want to guess the ending, but they don’t want to be so baffled that annoys them. Reading mysteries is a way for people to deal with the crime they see in their newspapers, or television or in their daily lives, in a safe impersonal way.”
Sue Grafton in Writer’s Digest, January1991 * CONSTABULARY NOTES FROM ALL OVER
(from the Vincenne, Indiana Sun-Commercial)
John Laue, 410 Ramsey Road, told police Monday the Fort Sackville Real Estate warehouse on State Street was Broken into Saturday night. A jar of pickles was opened.’ The New Yorker (May 18, 1987) **
MASTERS OF SUSPENSE
This morning I compute On a small screen A few vertigious words In which I appear, To make my presence known, Creating a momentary bond Between my readers
& myself. Dead persons Who have no shoes Need not apply: Even celluoid ghosts , Haunts & nuncles Fading in & out, Will never know
What they are missing. You, on the other hand, My innocent reader, Trapped by curiosity Or the simple refusal To give up what may be A life-losing proposition
Or sheer waste of time, Are wondering: How is all of this Going to turn out? Hitchcock in Psycho Makes a quick appearance, Like the word scissors,
"Wireless -- I loved that misnomer. The corners of London sitting rooms would contain a vast array of cables, leads, and paraphernalia, and the popular music-hall joke of the times was 'What's all that wire for?' 'Wireless, you fool !'"
Hermione Gingold. How to Grow Old Disgracefully: an autobiogrphy (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988) **
DULCIFY
"This verb comes from the Latin words “dulcinficare” (“to sweeten”) and “dulcis” (“sweet”). The same root is used to indicate sweetness of all kinds — from dulcet tones to dulce de leche. To “dulcify” something implies sweetening its taste, but used in context with a person, the word describes soothing or calming them down. You can dulcify an upset friend, but you can also dulcify the coffee you drink while chatting with them."
https://worddaily.com/words/Dulcify/
**
From the first issue of WORD WAYS
The first issue, published in 1968, leans heavily on material published from The Enigma, the magazine of the National Publisher’s League, in the mid-1920s!
Of its then-current contributors, the most mysterious was Edward L. Lee, who kicked things off with the amusing challenge to “improve” a simple American proverb, Ph.D-style. This meant rewriting it into scholarly impenetrability. His example:
A rolling stone gathers no moss: While bryophytic plants are typically encountered on substrata of earthly or mineral matter in concreted state, discrete substrata elements occasionally display a roughly spherical configuration which, in the presence of suitable gravitational and other effects, lends itself to a combined translatory and rotational motion. One notices in such cases an absence of the otherwise typical accretion of bryophyta.
from T.Campbell , editor of WORD PLAY **
BIG CABINETRY
In China nobody is called an architect; we call it 'big cabinetry' or 'small cabinetry. 'Big cabinetry' you build houses ; small cabinetry, you make furniture -- same method. It';s an old type of language...it's puzzled together...."
AI Weiwei. " Honestly, I think it's a Useless Building" in "No Place Like Home" by Jay Cheshes,
Smithsonian Magazine (January-February 2024)
GRIFFONAGE
"This word is borrowed from French and is rightly defined as ' careless handwriting .'
"Sometimes, reading a doctor's prescription feels like cracking a secret code. But here's the intriguing part: If you show a doctor a prescription written by a colleague, they will probably decipher it perfectly. Perhaps there's a mysterious class on griffonage at medical school." \ https://www.dictionaryscoop.com/article/10-Common-Things-You-Didnt-Know-Had-Names?utm_source=blog&utm_campaign=blog-20231229
** OUTDUMB
"Had I fooled (TED) Williams -- 'outdumbed him' - as it is called -- by throwing the easy pitch?"
Whitey Ford, as reported by Irv Goodman in The Saturday Review (March 3, 1962)
&& NEW WORDS IN TOWN:
HOSTBUSTER (n) -- rude guest
DIETGETIC (adj)--
in a movie or a play when a character loses weight as the action progresses, as in Hamlet or Jumbo.
EEKPHRASES --noun (pl): descriptions of or commentaries on a sentence poorly written or poorly spoken.
** ] The original words in this sentence have been cloned and have been replaced by their exact duplicates.
** When I sell liquor, it's called bootlegging; when my patrons serve it on silver trays on Lake Shore Drive, it's called hospitality."
Al Capone
**
Pass the Buck
Pushing responsibility onto someone or something else, is “passing the buck.” The blame for this idiom lies in the game of poker. During the frontier days, a knife with a buckhorn handle was often used to indicate the dealer. If the player didn’t want to deal, he could skip by “passing the buck" to the next player. The gambling phrase was adopted widely throughout World War II to refer to the way some countries avoided confronting threats. The idiom became so popular President Harry Truman had a sign made for his desk that famously read, “The buck stops here.”
"In Lao the word that sounds like "see" in English means "fuck." It took me a while to understand why "See you" always got a laugh. "
(Lao is a tonal language, with 6 tones, so that a word like "see" will change meaning depending on the tone (the rise and fall of the voice). That made for all kinds of embarrassing (or hilarious, if you were Lao) mistakes that foreigners learning the language would make. )
** Any husband who has ever had an argument with a woman can tell you -- English too is a tonal language. **
ON THE FALSE FRIEND "MIST"
A cosmetics company launched a deodorant spray in the 70's or early 80's, called Blue Mist. After a successful launch in English speaking markets they went into others, including Germany. They simply translated the name to Blauer Mist without checking the meaning. 'Mist' in German means dung. Must put some of that spray on before a big date!
Mike Clark **
ON TRYING TO GET THE ARTIST CLYFFORD STILL TO STOP TALKING
I sd “Be still, Still! Still, Still went on talking. He was still Still But Still was also not still If you know what I mean.
" Capone came along to change the subject and give sex a well-earned holiday. The movie massacres were like a breath of pure air after all the impropriety and misconduct of the films."
Alva Johnston. "Capone, King of Crime' in Vanity Fair (May 1931)
** WINSTON CHURCHILL DESCRIBES LORD CHARLES BERESFORD
"He is one of those orators of whom it was well said, 'Before they get up they do not know what they are going to say; when they are speaking, they do not what they are saying; and when they sit down, they do not know what they have said." **
THOMAS JEFFERSON
'I think it's the most extraordinary collectiom of talent, human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House - with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."
John F. Kennedy, at a dinner for U.S. Nobel Prize Winners (29 April 1962) ** THE FATHER OF ACCOUNTING
"An Italian mathematician and friar who lived in the 15th century, Luca Pacioli is widely considered the “Father of Accounting.” But his skills expanded beyond bookkeeping: He’s also one of the earliest writers on the art of magic. His unpublished 1508 book De Viribus Quantitatis discusses an array of magic tricks: how to make an “egg walk over a table,” how to make a “cooked chicken jump on the table,” and how to “make a snow torch that burns.” He’s also the first to discuss various card tricks, coin tricks, and fire-eating techniques."
https://www.interestingfacts.com/influential-magicians/Yp6adVuKogAHE3uP?liu=a28bbdc7f2e0154569dc36b4f43a3c0e&utm_source=blog&utm_medium=email&utm_cam ** THE FABULOUS JOE GOULD
“Let me introduce myself. The name is Joseph Ferdinand Gould, graduate of Harvard, magna cum difficulte, class of 1911, and chairman of the board of Weal and Work, Incorporated. In exchange for a drink, I’ll recite a poem, deliver a lecture, argue a point, or take off my shoes and imitate a sea gull. I prefer gin, but beer will do.”
Recorded by Joseph Mitchell in The New Yorker (December 12, 1942
**
SIR EDMUND GOSSE
Gosse was a prolific man of letters who was quite influential in his day. He translated three of Ibsen’s plays, notably Hedda Gabler (1891) and The Master Builder (1892; with W. Archer). He wrote literary histories, such as 18th Century Literature (1889) and Modern English Literature (1897), as well as biographies of Thomas Gray (1884), John Donne (1899), Ibsen (1907), and other writers. Some of his many critical essays were collected in French Profiles (1905). Unfortunately, Gosse was active just before the modern revolution in standards of scholarship and criticism, so that much of his critical and historical output now appears amateurish in its inaccuracies and carelessness."
from THE ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA * T.S. Eliot said: "I cannot conceive of a future society in which Sir Edmund Gosse would be possible." ** JESSE JAMES
“He was honest except when he went out to rob (there was no paradox in that to him,).” Homer Croy. Jesse James Was my Neighbor
**
BABE PALEY AND HER HUSBAND WILLIAM S. PALEY
“When we read of Babe Paley’s being driven by her chauffeur to Kennedy Airport so that she can pick up the freshly shot game bird she has had flown in from Europe for her husband’s dinner, our disappointment at being financially incapable of this sort of thing is exactly balanced by our satisfaction in feeling morally incapable of it as well.”
Louis Menand. “The Last Emperor: William S. Paley” in
American Studies (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux,2002)
**
JANET FLANNER (Who wrote for The New Yorker under the pen name Genet)
“The nom de plume of Genet was given me by Ross without asking me first…Owing to Ross’s speaking no printable French he did not know that Genet was the broom-flower, a civet cat, and also a jennet , which is a small Spanish horse, as well as a not very reliable French journalist who after the French Revolution was the first Franco-American Gazeteer.”
CURRENT BIOGRAPHY (March 1943) **
MAX BEERBOHM HAS LUNCH WITH GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
“In 1906 Max lunched with him to meet Mark Twain, on a visit to England. Lunch was scarcely over when Shaw jumped up and left. saying that he had an appointment with his dentist. Was this the way, Max exclaimed to Florence, to treat an aged and distinguished author from hospitable America! Nor could he reconcile himself to Shaw’s appearance. ‘He had a temperance beverage face,’ he said altogether Shaw was too much of a good thing.” *Florence was Beerbohm’s wife
David Cecil. Max (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin Company, 1964)
**
"No estimate is more in danger of erroneous calculations than those by which a man computes the force of his own genius." — Dr. Samuel Johnson
COMPUTING THE FORCE OF MY OWN GENIUS
My I.Q. + My age + The Amount of money I owe MasterCard - the number of copies of my latest book of poems sold on Amazon + the number of persons who read my blog - the number of persons who comment on my blogs, X the money in my savings account,- the number of rejection slips I have received in my lifetime + the number of women who have said they would rather be exiled to Siberia than be seen in public with me + the number of fan letters I received in 2023 (hint the number is less than 2), + the number of movies I have seen + the number of persons who have complained about my jokes - the number of books I have overdue at the library DIVIDE THE TOTAL BY ZERO = ? (show your work on a separate page)
“I don’t know anything about music. In my line you don’t have to.”
Elvis Presley in Oxymoronica
OOPS -- MISTAKE IN THE OPERA MADAME BUTTERFLY
"When Suzuki Butterfly's maid, prays at an alleged Buddhist shrine, she sings to the tune of 'Takai Yama,' a song that extols cucumbers and eggplants. Furthermore, she garbles the names of Shinto gods, who don't belong in a Buddhist setting to begin with. It's similar, Groos writes, to 'having a Catholic pray to Adam and Eve in front of a menorah."
Alex Ross. "Reorienting 'Butterfly,' in a reviewing Madame Butterfly/Madama Batafurai by Arthur Groos in The New Yorker (Oct. 30, 2023)
**
On the song "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life"
"On January 20,2009, it officially became the number one most requested song at British funerals, replacing Frank Sinatra's 'My Way.' It has remained there ever since. Beating out even Elvis. You've got to love the Brits. First of all, who would even have such a chart? And secondly, of course, you don't get paid for funerals, but hey, you take it where you can. It probably replaced 'Spam, Spam, Spam' at Viking funerals."
Eric Idle. Always Look on the Bright Side of Life: a Sortabiography (New York: Crown Archetype, 2018)
** THE MUSIC OF JAMES D'ANGELO
https://www.jamesdangelomusic.com/biography/
Severnside Composers Alliance, Space Time Sounds, 12 November 2018 Severnside Composers Alliance May 2018 Planet Tree Music Festival, Hampstead, October 2017
**
ARTURO TOSCANINI
Arturo Toscanini Conducting Tosca in Ni- ce, France, was greeted with thuderous applause. Why? Because... Because...Because.
** THE FIRST GOLD RECORD
"That Silver-haired Daddy of Mine" written by Jimmy Long and Gene Autry. A month after that song was released in 1932 it sold 30,000 copies.
" A year later, Art Sattherly met with Bev Barnett, my first press agent, and an idea was born: a gold-plated copy of 'Silver-haired Daddy' to celebrate the half-millionth record sold. When the sales hit a million, they gave me another one. And that was the start of the gold record tradition."
Gene Autry, with Mickey Hershowitz. Back in the Saddle Again (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1978) **
FROM MUSIC HISTORIAN BILLY J. ALTMAN
Re "Gold" records: Not to denigrate Mr. Autry, but starting in the early '30s, record companies often gave their artists silver and gold plated copies of their hit songs, mostly as company promo stunts to show they'd been successful. Still, most historians agree that the first time a song was really recognized as a million-selling gold record was in 1942, when RCA presented one to Glenn Miller for "Chattanooga Choo Choo" on a national radio broadcast. The Recording Industry Association of America finally began formally certifying gold records in 1958, and the first one was Perry Como's "Catch a Falling Star."
**
SHORE IN 2002 PICKED THE GREATEST FILM SCORES OF ALL TIME
1. A Double Life (1947) -- Miklos Rozsa 2. The Heiress (1949) -- Aaron Copland) 3. The Man With the Golden Arm (1959)-- Elmer Bernstein 4. Touch of Evil (1948)--Henry Mancini 5. La Dolce Vita (1963) -- Nina Rota 6. Woman in the Dunes (1964) --Toro Takematsu 7. Magic (1972)-- John Williams 8. Taxi Driver (1975 ) --Bernard Hermann) 9. Days of Heaven (1978 )-- Ennid Morricom? l0. Altered States (1980. ) -- John Coriglian Premier Magazine (September 2002)
How different would the above list be if it were compiled today? ** FILM MUSIC IN THE FAMOUS SHOWER SCENE IN ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S PSYCHO
"The strings taut, internal shrieking expressed the stifled nonstop scream that one would feel at a moment like that . (Janet Leigh) was barely even screaming. The music did that for her."
film composer Danny Elfman
**
ABOUT THE MUSICAL INSTRUMENT KNOWN AS THE KAZOO
'1884, American English, a commercial name, probably an alteration of earlier bazoo "trumpet" (1877), which probably is ultimately imitative (compare bazooka). In England, formerly called a Timmy Talker, in France, a mirliton.
Kazoos, the great musical wonder, ... anyone can play it; imitates fowls, animals, bagpipes, etc. [1895 Montgomery Ward catalogue, p.245]"
Mostly "etc."
ONLINE ETYMOLOGICAL DICTIONARY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBae5fYg66Y
** BILLIE HOLIDAY IS SINGING & I'M FEELING SO SAD
Good morning, heartache. Oh don't tell me what kind Of a dog-assed day it's going to be. Let me find out for myself. Here comes a long clarinet solo, Sex without foreplay. Let's knock the bitch around a little longer. Take a quick look at the bed & head for another town.
Hardship is one kind of music, Flump of thev feds sitting on her head Because she ain't Completely hobbled by cocaine yet. The world with its hot rods Of whoring & whining} Is smarter than anyone knows, No matter what is sad,
No matter what is sd, No matter how it is sd, No matter how much hardship, How much pain struggles Into her throat. Hardship is the music. Give the piano player a drink, & Shake it for all you is worth.
"Leave only three wasps alive in the whole of Europe and the air of Europe will still be more crowded with wasps than space is with stars." James Jeans **
HOW TO MAKE AN IMPRESSION OF A KEY SO YOU CAN MAKE AN IMPRESSION OF IT
"Neat attention to detail: when The Jackal is making an impression of a key, he first rubs it against the area between his lower lip and chin, one of the more oily parts of the skin. This is because - when making a clay impression - the clay or the key needs to be lubricated, or the clay risks sticking to the metal and ruining the impression. The natural oils of the skin provides that lubrication here."
Trivia, iMBd site – The Day of The Jackal
**
"Dressing a pool player in a tuxedo is like putting whipped cream on a hot dog."
Minnesota Fats ** FROM FRED E. MAGEL OF RIVER FOREST
“My father was a restaurant buff and a builder. I served the late Duncan Hines grading key restaurants. Perhaps I’ve dined in more restaurants than anyone else in history.”
“That is entirely possible, since Mr. Magel has eaten in more than Forty thousand restaurants and is listed as the champion restaurant Patron in the Guinness Book of Records. ‘I’m the only one in the book,’ he tells us, ‘who breaks his own record daily.” -American History (October 1975)
** THE OLDEST BREWERY IN THE WORLD
"On 14 February 2021, Egyptian and American archaeologists discovered what could be the oldest brewery in the world dating from around 3100 BCE at the reign of King Narmer. Dr. Matthew Adams, one of the leaders of the mission, stated that it was used to make beer for royal rituals."
Wikipedia
** HAPTIC TECHNOLOGY
"In electronics, “haptic technology” is also called “kinesthetic communication” or “3D touch,” and its goal is to give users more feedback when a task is accomplished — for example, when a button on a glass screen is tapped, a haptic buzz gives an acknowledgment. For many, the first introduction to haptic technology was through gaming controls, which introduced haptic features to make players feel more deeply invested in the games. However, the technology also has lifesaving applications in aviation, where haptic signals delivered through controls can be used to warn pilots of potential dangers, and automotive design, where haptic alerts encourage drivers to monitor lane departure. "
CROSSWORDS CAUSED PANIC IN BRITAIN LEADING UP TO D-DAY
"WHILE CROSSWORDS THRIVED IN AMERICA DURING WORLD WAR II, SOME IN BRITAIN FEARED THAT THE GAMES WERE BEING USED TO CONVEY MESSAGES OF SECRET ESPIONAGE. IN PARTICULAR, THE PUZZLES IN THE DAILY TELEGRAPH CAUGHT THE EYE OF MI5, THE BRITISH INTELLIGENCE SERVICE. THEY FEARED THAT LEONARD DAWE, THE PAPER’S CROSSWORD EDITOR, WAS SECRETLY COMMUNICATING WITH NAZI GERMANY THROUGH CLUES AND ANSWERS IN HIS PUZZLES. THE FIRST CURIOUS INCIDENT OCCURRED ON AUGUST 18, 1942, WHEN THE CLUE “FRENCH PORT (6)” APPEARED IN THE PAPER’S CROSSWORD. THE ANSWER TURNED OUT TO BE “DIEPPE,” WHICH WAS THE SITE OF A FAILED RAID THAT THE ALLIED FORCES LAUNCHED A DAY LATER.
THOUGH THIS WAS ULTIMATELY DEEMED A FLUKE, DAWE CAME UNDER FIRE YET AGAIN TWO YEARS LATER AS THE ALLIED INVASION OF NORMANDY APPROACHED. ON MAY 2, 1944, THE ANSWER “UTAH” APPEARED IN DAWE’S PUZZLE, WITH OTHER ANSWERS SUCH AS “OMAHA,” “OVERLORD,” AND “NEPTUNE” POPPING UP SHORTLY AFTER. ALL OF THESE TERMS WERE CODE NAMES RELATED TO THE IMPENDING D-DAY INVASION, WHICH SET OFF NEW ALARMS WITHIN MI5 THAT DAWE WAS GUILTY OF WHAT THEY BELIEVED ALL ALONG. IN THE END, DAWE WAS CLEARED OF INTENTIONAL WRONGDOING. INSTEAD, IT WAS DETERMINED THAT HE HAD BEEN ACCEPTING CROSSWORD SUGGESTIONS FROM HIS STUDENTS, WHO HUNG OUT AT A NEARBY SOLDIERS CAMP DURING RECESS AND OVERHEARD THE CODE WORDS."
HTTPS://HISTORYFACTS.COM/ARTS-CULTURE/ARTICLE/5-PUZZLING-FACTS-ABOUT-THE-HISTORY-OF-CROSSWORD-PUZZLES/
** THE LONG WAY BACK
Heroes make extraordinary journeys,
Forsaking safety,
Going alone or with a partner
Through city gates,
Into wilderness, to discover
The widerness in themselves,
Gilgamesh
& Ekidu, going without sleep,
Seeking to fulfill
The will of the gods. Moses
In the desert. Orpheus
In the underworld. No looking back.
Win, lose, or draw,
Bravery astonishes us.
Speaking of us, non-heroes,
What about journeys
We take, hearts stuttering
With fear, love, or grief.
So many twists & turns,
Too many false starts,
Backward, forward,
The longest journey we take
Is our frequent struggle
to get back to even.
Prose is written sentence by sentence; poetry is written line by line.
"We write in lines because we plant a vegetable garden in rows, because we have ribs, because..."
Sandra McPherson **
COUNTING OUT RHYME
Ink, pink, pen and ink, I command you for to wink, Rottom, bottom, dish clout, O.U.T. spells out, So out goes she.
English Folk Rhyme
** DECORATED SOLDIER & MOVIE ACTOR AUDIE MURPHY AS A POET
'... he had a natural talent for writing poetry. One of his better-known poems is "The Crosses Grow on Anzio" which appears in To Hell and Back attributed to a soldier named Kerrigan.'
Wikipedia **
DOUBLE DACTYLS by Neil Hickey
Higgledy piggledy General Washington Dallied with Sally and Mortgaged the farm.
Martha took washing in, Cursing the day that she Incomprehensibly Fell for his charm.
Washington was in love with Sally Fairfax but she was married, so he married Martha Custis, who was rich.
Pocketa pocketa General Washington Generalissimo At Valley Forge.
After that winter they Told him fortissimo "Dammit we could have been Frozen by George!
(A form of light verse invented and promoted by Paul Pascal, Anthony Hecht, and John Hollander. The double dactyl consists of two quatrains, each with three double-dactyl lines followed by a shorter dactyl-spondee pair. The two spondees rhyme.)
Double dactyl definitiom - Poetry Foundation
** 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.” Their memorial stones lie next to each other in Poets’ Corner."
Graham Chesters Chair, The Philip Larkin Society **
"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."
** ON EARLY POETRY ANTHOLOGIES
Clare Bucknell in The Treasuries: Poetry anthologies and the making of British culture,
"Bucknell begins not with Tottel’s Miscellany (1557), the original anthology of poems in English, though she names it in her introduction, but with the first installment in the Poems on Affairs of State series (1697–1707), by which means Dryden, the Duke of Buckingham et al hoped to give the public glimpses of the courts of James II, William III and Queen Anne. These anthologies served as “a key means by which British men, women and children were introduced to the culture of their nation”. Few have since proved strictly influential on the course of history; but few is better than none. "
"Letting the mob in on the enduring influence of the poetry anthology" By Camille Ralphs in TLS On line (April 28, 2023) ** CATCH & RELEASE RHYMING
For me, I touched a thought, I know, Has tantalized me many times, (Like turns of thread the spiders throw Mocking across our path) for rhymes To catch and let go.
From Two in the Campagne by Robert Browning ** PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Percy Bysshe Shelley Placed his hand on his wife’s belly & whispered “I met a traveler from an antique land.” Just why he did so is not easy to understand. MY DEBT TO A.E. HOUSMAN
"There are certain spiritual experieces in our lives which we would not have missed for anything, They are worth more to us than years of ordinary existence. In an hour the soul rises to a higher plane, and, despite temporary lapses, one can never live again on the lower level. The mind leaps to an elevation. That afternoon in my room on the top floor of old North Middle, as I absorbed The Hero as a Man of Letters, I was in an ectasy. There is no other word for it. The pages of the book seemed to be aflame, and the fire consumed me utterly."
William Lyon Phelps. As I like It (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1924 ** IN PRAISE OF THE BOOK AS AN OBJECT
"It's obvious to most of us that the book as a form has a great virtue. The paper, the ink, the cover, what Updike called 'the charming little clothing box of the thing' -- we understand without having it pointed out how much they add to the experience of reading. No congregation will ever celebrate the Torah in paperback,"
D.T. May. "The Electronic Book" in The American Scholar (Summer 2000) ** From LIFE LINES: A COMMONPLACE BOOK
Charlie Cherry has published LIFE LINES, the best one-volume collection of quotations for all kinds of readers. In his introduction, Dr. Cherry referred to Henry Davd Thoreau who had this to say about the joys of reading:
No wonder that Alexander carried the Iliad with him on his expeditions in a precious casket. A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips---not to be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself. The symbol of an ancient man’s thought becomes a modern man’s speech. . . . Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. . . . There are probably words addressed to our condition exactly, which, if we could really hear and understand, would be more salutary than the morning of the spring to our lives, and possibly put a new aspect on the face of things for us. —Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), Walden (1854), pp. 118-119 & p. 123.
**
MAX CARRADOS, THE BLIND DETECTIVE
“When (ERNEST) Bramah introduced the blind Carrados, he created the first physically handicapped detective in mystery fiction. Having become blind as an adult, Carrados is able to adjust and maintain his life, including his abilities to detect. His blindness does not weaken his zest for life. He works side by side with his friend Louis Carlyle, a private investigator who is a disbarred lawyer. The key to the books is the way a sighted man is blind to the clues that Carrados can detect.”
Gary Warren Niebuhr. Make Mine A Mystery: A Reader’s Guide to Mystery and Detection Fiction (Libraries Unlimited, 2003).
**
ON EMMA BOVARY
“ She was enmeshed in a particular set of historical circumstances – a flourishing letter-writing culture, burgeoning female literacy, an emerging awareness of urban bourgeous fashion among the professional classes – Which created an especially wide gulf between women’s expectations of love and its realities. ‘To be in fantasy is to live ‘as if’, according to Denise Riley, but life may become intolerable when a metaphor collides with the facts.”
Erin Maglaque. “Promises, Promises” in London Review of Books (23 April 2022) ** LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET
"Lady Audley's Secret is a sensation novel by Mary Elizabeth Braddon published in 1862. It was Braddon's most successful and well-known novel. Critic John Sutherland (1989) described the work as "the most sensationally successful of all the sensation novels".
By some estimates, Lord Audley's Secret was the best selling novel of the 19th Century **
READING POETRY IS NOT ALWAYS THE EASIEST THING IN THE WORLD TO DO
If you are reading this poem While running away From 3 or 4 Russian spies Who have silencers On their guns & umbrellas with poisoned tips, You are, most likely, Not giving this poem The full attention it deserves.
When Patrick Stewart tells us that he arranges his books by size, he got me thinking about large books on my shelves. The largest is a world-wide stamp album about four inches thick. The smallest is a North by Northwest flip book showing a crop-duster plane chasing Cary Grant. On a grander note, the biggest book in the world, according to The Guinness Book of Records, is The Prophet Mohammed. It is the largest, heaviest, widest, longest and the most expensive book in the world. I have no idea where I would put it. I have no idea what the smallest book is, but it would most likely fit on one of my shelves.
Sincerely,
** Dear Editors:
At the conclusion of your By the Book interview with Edan Lepucki, the author said (humorously,I believe) that she wanted Robert Caro to write her life story. No doubt she knows that if her wish were granted, Mr. Caro and his wife would have to move in with her and her husband and their children for at least three years. And then a long wait afterwards for the volumes to appear.
Sincerely,
Published in NY TIMES BOOK REVIEW (Sunday, August 19, 2023) **
Dear Editors:
As a fan of Jason Zingman's essays on comedy, I have been considering hislatest column that is headlined "A Wistful Yearning for Weirdness." If any person wishes to watch weirdness in action, I recommend that he,she, or they forsake comedy clubs and attend performances at the House of Representatives, wherea good number of these zany public servants play to standing room only, playing to the audience of Donald Trump, with Trump's one hand clapping,applauding himself.
Sincerely,
** Dear Editors:
What is wrong with the New YorkTimes? Can't your editors report some good news without also throwing cold water on it? For example: July 20th's front page story is headlined:
RECESSION WORRIES ARE WANING, BUT DON'T POP THE CORK JUST YET
I decided not to read the article. I would have felt so much better without the warning. I believe that Times readers are old enough to know that all good things eventually come to an end.
Sincerely, ** Dear Editors:
2 RIDDLES: HOW MANY PERSONAL GIFTS FROM BILLIONAIRES DOES IT TAKE TO INFLUENCE SUPREME COURT VOTES?
What constitutes an impersonal gift to a Supreme Court Justice?
Sincerely, **
Dear Editors: (THE NEW YORKER)
I learned a lot about Linnaeus and binomens in Kathryn Schuz's fine essay/review but I must take issue with her statement that "the fundamental task of biography is "to show us why that life mattered." After watching "It's a Wonderful Life" every Christmas for decades, many persons have come to the conclusion that even the lives of "ordinary" persons matter. Or, as the fictional detective Harry Bosch maintains, "Everyone matters or no one matters." Why a certain life matters is merely the sales pitch for the selling of a biography to the book-reading public.The fundamental task of a biographer is to tell us a story of a life in such a well-written, well-structured way that we as readers see and become involved with a life that is different from our own. As we turn the pages of a good or great biography we encounter, the knowledge and consciousness of the biographer as he or she or they grapples with the actions and motivations and thoughts of another human being. Knowing, as well as we can, the lives of other persons matters in non-fiction and fiction matters.
Sincerely,
**
Dear Editors: Is the Times Editorial Board being satirical when it asserts in bold print that :"Before he faces a jury, the former president must answer to his supporters"? The Board must be kidding. Almost every day, President Biden must answer to his own supporters. "Never apologize, never admit you're wrong" Trump does not have to answer to his followers who believe, support, and enable everything he says and does. No questions because Trump has all the answers. His heroes are dictators. The list of 18 co-conspirators with the Donald in Georgia is a gallery of Yes-persons. How many of the so-called GOP Presidential Candidates dare to say No, dare to question Trump on any policy issue? The Editorial Board hasn't been reading its own newspaper.
Sincerely, **
Louis Phillips <louisprofphillips@gmail.com> Sat, Oct 28, 3:38 PM to Newsroom
Dear Editors:
When I read the words "House of Horrors" on the cover of the October 29th issue of the book review, I imagined that a new non-fiction book about the House of Representatives had been published. Then ,on the lower right hand corner, there it was: the book's title -- "The Haunting of Hill House" -- thus,confirming my misapprehension. Happy Halloween, America!
Sincerely, **
Dear Editors:
In his Sunday Opinion piece, Matthew Walther contends that William Friedkin's The Exorcist (1973) is the best film ever made about the Roman Catholic Church. I disagree. The best film about the Roman Catholic Church is, hands down, Spotlight. (2015) directed by Tom McCarthy. The Exorcist may deal with an imaginary Hell, but Spotlight deals with the real hell of young men suffering from being sexually preyed upon by priests and then the cover-up by the Church. The film is also a tribute to the importance of investigative journalism.
Sincerely, **
Dear Editors:
THE GOP BLUEPRINT FOR '25
When I was one-and-twenty I heard Republicans say, “Give schoolbooks and libraries But not your guns away; Give health away and charities But keep your weapons free.” Because I was one-and-twenty, The NRA really suited me.
When I was one-and-twenty I heard the GOP say again, “Global warming is a fiction. Gun laws are in vain; Votes bought with bucks a plenty Is what politicians do.” Now I am two-and-twenty; And I wonder what is true.
"When you make a woman cross her legs in the films, maybe you don't need to see how high she can cross them, but how low she can cross them and still be interesting."
Will H. Hayes, Censorship "Czar of the Movies" See Current Biography 1943 ** HOLLYWOOD SIMILE
On February 14, 1967, Sheila Graham's column in The New York Post reported that Candice Bergen said tha "Hollywood is like Picasso's bathroom." That statement raises a number of questions: "What were Picasso's bathrooms really like? " (I am assuming that Picasso was wealthy enough to own homes that had more than one bathroom). "Did Candice Bergen really know what Picasso's bathroom look like? Or was she guessing?" "Is the description of Hollywood an expression of criticism or an expression of disdain?"
**
TINSEL TOWN "Strip away the phony tinsel of Hollywood and you will find the real tinsel underneath." Oscar Levant ** RANDOLPH SCOTT & THE VIRGINIAN (1929)
"Future western movie icon Randolph Scott, from Virginia, was hired as a dialect coach to teach Gary Cooper a Virginia accent, and also has a small non-speaking part in the film."
iDMb Trivia
**
WHO WAS THE FIRST ACTOR TO RECEIVE AN ACADEMY AWARD FOR PLAYNG A GANGSTER? ' Van Heflin
"Back at MGM, his third assignment at the studio, Johnny Eager (1941), had proved an excellent showcase for his acting skills. He played Jeff Hartnett, right-hand man of the titular crime figure (Robert Taylor), a complex, sardonic character, at once loyal soldier yet abjectly self-loathing. For his role as the heavy-drinking, Shakespeare-quoting mobster with a conscience, Van got the Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor in 1942"
iDMb--Johnny Eager
**
' At the Atlanta premiere of 'Gone With the Wind': The Explosive Lost Scenes, David Vincent Kimel, The Ankler
"At the Atlanta premiere of Gone With the Wind on December 15, 1939, the 10-year-old Martin Luther King Jr. was dressed as a slave. It was the second night of an official three-day holiday proclaimed by the mayor of Atlanta and the governor of Georgia. King’s choir was serenading a white audience, directed to croon spirituals to evoke an ambiance of moonlight and magnolias for the benefit of the movie’s famous producer, David O. Selznick."
from The Daily Kos Morning Round Up (March 2, 2023)
** TALKING ABOUT GONE WITH THE WIND
"...'Hollywood : An Oral History'' makes clear that the shimmering masterpieces and the schlock disasters often rose from the same system and the same people one after another. This happened most memorably in the case of the 1939 films 'The Wizard of Oz' and 'Gone With the Wind.' Both were made by more or less the same people, the crowd at M-G-M --even though the musical gets richer and stranger with subsequent viewings, while the Southern saga gets more ridiculous (and in its way more repellent) with every passing year."
Adam Gopnik. "Talking Movies" in The New Yorker (December 5, 2022)
** FRANK JACOBS'HOLLYWOOD JABBERWOCKY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlOtPem88b4
** THE ENDING TO ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S I CONFESS
"When Monty accepted the role in I Confess, the priest was to be hanged at the end, then proven innocence. But Hollywood censors thought it would offend Roman Catholics; a silly happy ending was tacked on while they were shooting the picture, making Hitchcock upset. He thought that "Montgomery Cliff always looked as if the angel of death was always walking alongside of him,"and it would have been very powerful cinematically to watch him stride to the gallows for a crime he didn't commit."
The autobiography of film producer Hal Wallis contains references, to The Maltese Falcon that fans of the movie should take note of. First, Mr. Wallis notes that the film censors at first objected to showing any drinking in the movie (this, after all, was in 194l, when film-goers were easily shocked. What about barroom scenes in westerns?) Mr. Wallis was finally allowed to show some drinking, but, as he points out, "We were not allowed to have the line spoken by Sam to his secretary, 'You'll come tonight?'.We could not show Joel Cairo as a homosexual. When he leaves the office, Sam couldn't say 'Just smell those gardenias.' "Instead Sam had to sniff the air and remark, 'Hmm! Gardenias!' Sam couldn't slap Bridget or indicate that he had slept with her. The Fat Man had to say, 'By gad, sir!' not 'By God, sir!'.
--Hal Wallis and Charles Higham. Starmaker: the Autobiography of Hal Wallis (New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1980)
** CONFUSION
Jane Powell-- I once confused her with William Powell. She was so insulted, she hit me below the belt. I never found out how William felt. ** GENE AUTRY
Autry, Gene Westerns wholesome & clean There was no kissing or fondling, of course. Unless he was alone with Champion, his horse.
** ALFRED HITCHCOCK
A movie director named Hitchcock Made movies which frighten, which shock. Viewers grow tense Wrapped in suspense Because plot twists are unpredictable.
**
ON BEING A MOVIE STAR
Gary Cooper Was not super Pleased, & he was not forgiving, When I asked what he did for a living.
LUPE VELEZ & HER MARRIAGE TO JOHNNY WEISMULLER
"According to biographer Michelle Vogel, Vélez’s English was often fouled up in the interviews to fit a Mexican stereotype. Her scripts were often written in broken English as well, prompting her to once demand: “Who is this so- and- so who writes this stuff? What do you think I am? You write this in English!” But despite her personal embarrassment, in interviews she often made a joke out of her allegedly poor language skills. “Everybody says, ‘Why don’t you learn better English, Lupe deeah?’ So I answer, ‘I was married to a guy who can only say, ‘Me Tarzan, you Jane. How can I learn English from heem?’”
The Turbulent Life and Tragic Death of “Mexican Spitfire” Lupe Velez.
She shot at Gary Cooper. She threatened to slit Norma Shearer’s throat.
Meet Lupe Velez by Hadley Meares in Los Angeles Magazine ( February 8, 2018)
**
1939 -- THE HIGHEST PAID PERSON IN THE UNITED STATES
"In 1939, when two-thirds of all American families made
between $1,000 and $2,000 a year, Cooper surpassed
the heads of IBM, Lever Brothers and General Motors,
and earned $482,826, the highest salary in the United
States."
Jeffrey Meyers. Gary Cooper: American Hero. New York:
William Morrow and Company, Inc. 1998.
**
W.C. FIELDS COULD NOT BEAR TO WATCH CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S FILMS
"...Fields was incapable of watching him (CHAPLIN) perform
for more than a few minutes. The virtuosity
of the little fellow's pantomime caused Field's to suffer horribly."
...
"...asked what he thought of Chaplin's work, he said, "The son of a bitch is a ballet dancer."
"He's pretty funny, don't you think?" his companion went on doggedly.
"He's the best ballet dancer that ever lived," said Fields, 'and if I get a good chance I'll kill him with my bare hands."
Robert Lewis Taylor. W.C. Fields: His Follies and Fortunes
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1949)
**
WHAT FICTIONAL CHARACTER HAS APPEARED IN MORE FILMS THAN ANY OTHER?
T.Campbell, editor of Wordplay, has done cosiderable
research to answer the above question. He concludes:
"Looking at this more closely, I see that Sherlock Holmes' record is for film and TV combined. The true record-holder
for films only, according to that piece, is Dracula!
Someone really should update these, anyway. I've seen lots of both characters in the years since then, but it's always possible those numbers have changed since 2012. I may have to look into this further.
**
THE FIRST PUBLIC FILM SCREENING
" The first official theater showing silent films opened in 1905 in Pittsburgh, called the Nickelodeon after the 5-cent price of admission. Before the theatre, motion pictures were more of a traveling exhibit. They were shown in between acts at vaudeville shows, or as quick shorts before other performances. Within months after the first theater opened, more than a dozen more nickelodeons opened throughout Pittsburgh; within two years, 8,000 theaters dotted the country."
History Quiz Website --June 13, 2023
**
THE INFLUENCE OF COWBOY STAR KEN MAYNARD
WHO WROTE A HORSE NAMED TARZAN
"Prince Norodom Sihanouk, former ruler of Cambodia, idolized Maynard. He said, "He was my idol as a cowboy 'dispenser of justice.' He had an incomparably beautiful white horse who was as intelligent as a man and behaved like an angel." Sihanouk never missed a Maynard movie in Phnom Penh, and when his father bought him two horses, "I could practice horse riding 'a la cowboy.'"
•
• iMBd Trivia -- Ken Maynard
**
WHY COMING ATTRACTIONS ARE CALLED TRAILERS
Movie previews are called “trailers” because they were originally shown after the movie. In the early days of moviegoing, you didn’t just buy a ticket for one feature-length film and leave once the credits started rolling. You were instead treated to a mix of shorts, newsreels, cartoons, and, eventually, trailers — which, per their name, played after the movie rather than before — with people coming and going throughout the day. The idea for trailers came from Nils Granlund, who in addition to being a business manager for
movie theaters worked as a producer on Broadway, which
explains why the first trailer was actually for a play:
1913’s The Pleasure Seekers. Today there are production
houses that exclusively make trailers and are handsomely rewarded for their efforts, sometimes to the tune of
millions of dollars.
https://www.interestingfacts.com/everyday-mysteries/ZJ9FVSc2ZwAH8m5U
**
WALTER MATTHAU
Walter Matthau
Did not star in Brother, Where Art Thou,
But he had many other things to thankful for.
(I have decided not to write a line four.)
PIPER LAURIE
Laurie, Piper--
I see in the newspaper
That she appeared in the film Carrie.
Or am I confusing her Madam Curie?
HUMPHREY BOGART
Humphrey Bogart (or Bogie),
When Lauren Bacall asked him to buy an antique bougie,
Did not buy it because
He did not know what a bougie was.
LJP
PhillipsMiscellany 