“I never saw an American man walk or stand well;…they are 
nearly all hollow chested and round shouldered.”
                                   Francis Trollope (1780-1863)
**
GROUCHO MARX SEES JOE DIMAGGIO

‘P.S. I saw Joe DiMaggio last night at Chasen’s and he wasn’t wearing his baseball suit. This struck me as rather foolish. Suppose a ballgame broke out in the middle of the night? 
By the time he got into his suit the game would be over.”

Groucho Marx in a letter to Ace Goodman (January 18 1951) 
The Groucho Letters: Letters from and to Groucho Marx
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967)
**


ABRAHAM LINCOLN-- TOO BIG TO CRY


"A few minutes after the Illinois Legislature elected 
Stephen A. Douglas rather than Lincoln Senator in
1858, the latter was asked by a friend, 'How do you 
feel? ' Said he: "I feel like the boy who stubbed his
toe; I am too big to cry and too badly hurt to laugh.'"

Paul F. Boller,Jr.  Presidential Anecdotes (New York:
Penguin Books, 1981)

**

DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER & THE UNITED STATES NAVAL ACADEMY

Dwight D. Eisenhower finished 1st in the competitive exam to gain entrance to the United States Naval Academy, but his application  was rejected because he would have been too 
old by several months when the next Academy year started.
**

HERE LIES
A.TOOMB.          --The grave-marker of Andrew Toomb
BENEATH            in Scroto County, Ohio
A TOMB

**
POLITICS & JOURNALISM

" If one morning I walked on top of the water 
across the Potomac River, the headlines  that
 afternoon would read: PRESIDENT CAN'T SWIM."
                                               
 Lyndon B. Johnson

**

ON CASEY JONES

"Often regarded as a mythical folk hero, Casey Jones was actually an engineer, and from all accounts as brave as 
the song makes him out to be. His first name, however, 
does not derive from 'K.C.' for 'Kansas City' as often 
said; he waa born near Cayce, Kentucky, promnounced in 
two syllables , and from this fact came his nickname. 
(His real name was John Luther Jones.)
  " Nor was he a 'rounder,' in spite of the words of 
 the ballad ('Casey Jones was the rounder's name'). A 
'rounder' in railroad is a worker who moves from  job 
to job: but Casey Jones stayed with his line, the 
Illinois Central, until his death."

Tom Burnham. The Dictionary of Misinformation 
(New York: Ballantine Books, 1975)
**

ON THE ORIGIN OF THE WORD DOUGHBOY-- SLANG FOR 
AN AMERICAN SOLDIER 

doughboy (n.)
"U.S. soldier," 1864, American English, said to have been 
in oral use from 1854, or from the Mexican-American War 
(1847), it is perhaps from resemblance of big buttons on 
old uniforms to a sort of cookie or biscuit of that name, 
a boiled dumpling of raised dough (attested from 1680s),
but there are other conjectures.

ONLINE ETYMOLOGICAL DICTIONARY
**


"During the Mexican campaign the American soldiers  called 
the Mexicans 'Adobe Boys' because their uniformds covered 
with mud, were the same color as the adobe huts. Then, 
during WWI, the word spelled 'doughboys' was used by 
American soldiers to describe themselves after they were
 covered with mud during the battles in France."

Sidney Skolsky 
**

CHARLES G. DAWES & AMERICAN POPULAR MUSIC

Not many Americans know the name Charles G. Dawes today,
 but they should. As one of only three U.S. Vice Presidents
 to receive the Nobel Peace Prize during their lifetimes 
(for his work to preserve peace in Europe), he’s reserved a place in the history books alongside Theodore Roosevelt 
and Al Gore. But perhaps even more notably, he’s also 
the only veep with a No. 1 hit pop song. Dawes was a self-trained pianist and flautist as well as a banker, and 
in 1911, 14 years before he’d become Calvin Coolidge’s
 Vice President, he wrote a short instrumental piece 
titled “Melody in A Major.” The song received some 
attention during Dawes’ lifetime, but it wasn't until 
1951 — the year he died — that American songwriter 
Carl Sigman put lyrics to Dawes’ creation and called it
 “It’s All in the Game.” Seven years later, Tommy Edwards
 became the first Black artist to reach No. 1 in the 
U.S. with his doo-wop-influenced rendition of Sigman’s
 song."

Interesting Facts (June 27, 2023)
**


THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 1948

Thomas E. Dewey
To Truman said "Phooey!"
Harry S Truman 
to Dewey said  "&"∂$$%@&&*¢™#@*.

LJP

*

ON PLASTIC MAN CREATED IN 1941

“…petty criminal Eel O’Brian fell into some acid and became, well, rubbery, then rehabilitated . He stood out thanks to creator Jack Cole’s Daliesque combination of visual dexterity and absurdist comedy, making him superherodom’s  response to Rudolph Dirks and Winsor McCay. Though he can take any shape, for example, he maintains the same colorful uniform: his powers of disguise should be somewhat limited, but people don’t seem to notice. ‘I never knew fighing for the law could be
So much fun!” O’Brian says, finishing his first adventure. Readers felt the same way.”


Jeremy Dauber. American Comics : A History (New
York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2022)
**
CHARLES SCHULTZ, PEANUTS, PIG-PEN & McCARTHYISM

“Over the course of a month in 1954, Pig-Pen’s dirtiness 
spreads to the other characters: first Schroeder, then 
Snoopy. Patty is shown talking into a telephone about the “awful” contagion; the person on the other end of the
 phone is ultimately revealed to be… Dirty Charlie Brown. (“What’s so awful about it?”) Everyone, it turns out,
 has a Dirty version of themselves: mussed, unkempt,
 scribbled over. This feels true. The contagion plotline 
ends when Schroeder and Charlie Brown, now clean, call 
Patty to tell her they followed her advice. (“You’d 
really be proud of us.”) Cut to the person at the other
 end of the phone… Dirty Patty. (“I would?”) Patty 
and Pig-Pen, the self and its shadow, have finally merged.
 The contagion series came out in September 1954, as 
Joseph McCarthy was finally being discredited after 
four years  of the Red Scare.

     It’s clear that the contagion is a social one…’

ELIF BATUMAN in ASTRA: "The Dirt on Pig-Pen "| (astra-mag.com)

**
ON THE NAME TARZAN

According to Edgar Rice Burroughs, the name Tarzan means 
in the language of the mangani (ape-like hominids)--
white skin.
**

QUIZ QUESTION #86543

According to Wikipedia, this Father of the American
Cartoon “ created a modern version of Santa Claus (based on the traditional German figures of Sankt Nikolaus and Weihnachtsmann) and the political symbol of the elephant for the Republican Party (GOP).” Who was he?

Answer below
**

ONE OF THE FIRST SYNDICATED ADVENTURE STRIP HEROES

“On  January 7, 1929, the American release of the daily Tarzan newspaper comic strip made the Ape-Man one of the first syndicated adventure strip heroes. Hal Foster, its brilliant artist, was born in 1892 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He studied at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and later created and drew the famous Prince Valiant newspaper comic strip…’

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

**

ON THE WORD SUPERHERO (#1179067)

"Although the word superhero predates comics by some 40 years, it rapidly became a prized commercial asset. In 1981, after decades of wrangling, Marvel and DC comics obtained a trademark (#1179067) for the term. Kryptonite is trademarked by DC Comics (toys and clothing) and Schlage Lock company (bicycle locks)."

Ben Schott in Playboy  (June 2016)
**

A MEMORY OF COMICS

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
**

**
 BRENDA STARR, REPORTER

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."
 
Interesting Facts (August 28, 2023)
**

**
Clara Bow inspired Betty Boop

"Clara Bow was one of the women who provided Max Fleischer 
with inspiration for Betty Boop, the squeaky-voiced flapper icon. Other inspirations include singer Helen Kane, who sued Paramount for what she called Fleischer’s “deliberate caricature” of her. The court ruled against Kane, noting 
that Boop was a composite of several different women, 
including Bow."

Mental Floss
**
READING ACTION COMICS 40 YRS. TOO LATE


I am ploughing my way
Thru Clark Kent's secret identity.
Great Caesar's Ghost! 

I've had  with the foreflanks
Of Lit Crit. 
Literature is meant to fly,

Splatt! Whapp!

Time to spatter Metropolis
With finer tints 
of hemoglobin.

I was meant
To leap tall bildingromans
With a single bound, meant

To bend Lois Lane 
In my bare hands.

Time to stick dynamite
Up the ass of Shakespeare.
Hamlet, with its cheap poisons,
Is not half so good
As this 10 cent comic
Falling apart 
In my hands. 


Louis Phillips
**
ANSWER TO QUIZ:

THOMAS NAST 
"Called the "Father of the American Cartoon," Thomas Nast (1840-1902) was an influential caricaturist and political cartoonist. Remembered for his Civil War illustrations in Harper's Weekly, Nast's political cartoons were also instrumental in the downfall of Boss Tweed and the election of President Ulysses S. Grant. ... Google Books
Homepage

" 
        

"The essence of dramatic form is to let an idea come over people without its being it being plainly stated."
                Stanley Kubrick

OSCAR LEVANT ON ACTING ON THE STAGE

“The only play I’m really available for would be a 
revival of The Cherry Orchard. I could play Firs, 
the old caretaker. At the end of the play they forget 
to remove him from the house and the house is locked. 
You can hear his lonely pounding as the curtain goes 
down. You can hear the workman with their hammering 
destroying the cherry orchard.
   “That’s the way it is around our house. I seldom 
leave the place, but when I do, for a visit with my 
analyst (the only reason I resumed analysis is because 
I can’t afford a subscription to Esquire), I am greeted 
by hordes of admirers who are let loose from the local 
house for the aged….”

Oscar Levant. Memoirs of an Amnesiac.
**
ON PERSONS WHO REVIEW PLAYS FOR A LIVING

"Only a swine would be a theatre critic. Think of it.
You show up at 7:30, you glug back a glass of pre-warmed 
shiraz, you slouch into the stalls with your unsmiling colleagues, you sit there blinking and staring through
90 minutes of laborious artifice (over which numerous 
gifted artists have sweated for many months) and when
it's over, instead of slinking home in a mood of 
wordless lamentation, you rush to a telephone and 
repeat your meanest thoughts to a copy taker for the
national press.To put it mildly, this is heartless
cruelty. The truth is worse. Most reviewers are
borderline psychotic."

Lloyd Evans, The Spectator's Theater critic in
The Spectator  (18 October 2003)

**

CURTAIN LINES

  In his introduction to the published
 version of the play The Damask Cheek by John Van Druten and Lloyd Morris, Mr. Van Druten recalled an earlier play whose title was The Easiest Way:
  “Watching the play performed, I have been somewhat surprised by the dimensions of the laugh that greets the first mention of The Easiest Way.  I had not thought that it would be so widely known and recognized by audiences of
 over thirty years later, even though most people seem to know its famous last line – and to know it wrong.  Several people who read my manuscript challenged my quotation thereof, assuring me that it ought to read ‘I’m going to Rector’s and afterwards to hell,’ and this I found was the caption underneath the photograph of the play in the magazines of the period, although the published version gives the lines as we have quoted it in The Damask Cheek.”
  I doubt that many theatre – goers
 today will have much memory of The Easiest Way and its shocking last – “I’m going to Rectors to make a hit – and to hell with the rest.”  There are, however, a new generation of curtain lines that are
 difficult to shake from the memory.
  Below are some final lines from classic American dramas.  How many plays can you identify from their final spoken words?
1. “Blow out your candles Laura – and so good-bye.”
2. “No!  I’m going to be baptized, damn it!”
3. “I remember that every “Saturday night Mama would sit down by the kitchen table and count out the money Papa had brought home in the little envelope.”
4. “Deep in December our hearts should remember and follow.”
5. “I…am…George…I…am…”
6. “Then let’s play poker.  (Sharply to the boys).  And watch your cigarettes, will you?  This is my house, not a pig sty.”
7. “Of course, the fireworks blew up, but that was Mr. De Penna’s fault, not yours.  We’ve all got our health and as far as anything else is concerned, we’ll leave it to you. 

Answers to curtain lines

 1. The Glass Menageriie
2.  Life with Father
3.  I remember Mama
4.  The Fantasticks
5.  Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
6.  The Odd Couple
7.  You can’t Take it With Your

**

       STAGE NEWS FROM ALL OVER

       I am cast to play a part
       In the drama of my own life,
       But why am I
       Given only a walk-on role?
       Why have there been
       No rehearsals?


        Louis Phillips


**
ON GOING TO SEE A BROADWAY SHOW


NYC theater-goers know,
As do the Bengal Lancers:
“You pay your money
& you take your chances.

Louis Phillips

for Ivan

TAYLOR MAC 

"You can't hide when you sing. You can try to, but you always end up telling some kind of truth about who you are." 
                                                 Taylor Mac 

Jennifer Schuessler. "A Wilder Socrates? No Question."
 in The New York Times (January 21, 2022
**

FRANZ LISZT & HIS PIANO

“My piano is to me what a ship is to the sailor, what a steed is to the Arab. It is the intimate personal depository of everything that stirred wildly in my brain during the most impassioned days of my youth. It was there that all my wishes, all my dreams, all my joys and all my sorrows lay.”
          Franz Liszt

**
ON EXPLAINING THE MEANING OF A PIECE OF MUSIC

Once, somebody asked Robert Schumann to explain the meaning of a certain piece he had just played on the piano.
      What Robert Schumann did was to sit back down and play the piece of music again.
 
**
MOZART'S FOR THE BIRDS!


"Not only did famed composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart cherish his companionship with his starling, but he also gained inspiration from the little bird. He bought the starling in 1784 at a pet shop in Vienna. As the story goes, the bird was singing Mozart’s “Piano Concerto No. 17 in G Major,” prompting Mozart to take him home as a pet. There's even a book about the unlikely companionship, called “Mozart’s Starling."

History Quiz (March 14, 2023)

**
 SINGING MICE

"Though humans have lived alongside mice for at 
least 15,000 years, few of us ever heard mice sing,
because they do so in frequencies beyond the range
detectable by human hearing. As pups, their high-
pitched songs alert their mothers to their whereabouts;
as adults, they sing in ultrasound to woo one another."
...
...a male mouse could alter the pitch of its song to
compete with other male mice for female attention."

Sonia Shah. "A Manner of Speaking" in The New York
Times Magazine (September 24,2023)
**

**
THE TWIST & HANK BALLARD

“The Twist” — both the song and the dance move that went with it — originated with R&B musician Hank Ballard, who released the tune with his band the Moonlighters in 1959. Ballard claimed the dance was inspired by the fact that his band moved on stage as if they were "trying to put a cigarette out." Singer Chubby Checker recorded the song in 1960 as the dance swept the nation, reaching No. 1 twice on the pop charts.
Source: Song Facts
https://www.historyquiz.com/quiz/60e87a6e727bed00095896cc?utm_source=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=6413e10c816737929b888715

*
"My definition of music is anything that sounds good to the ear. If a peanut rolling across the floor sounds good, that's music."

     Willie Nelson

**

HOW I MANAGED TO FLUNK MY HISTORY
OF MUSIC CLASS

“Phillips, kindly tell the class what you think
About the German composer Heinrich Frick.”
“I didn’t read the assignment, I confess.
But didn’t he compose Porgy & Bess?”
**
**
THE BEATLES 1968 SONG "BLACKBIRD"

"The lyrics “Take these broken wings and learn to fly” have inspired many people from many different walks of life in the 50-plus years since Paul McCartney wrote “Blackbird.” But at a concert in 2016, he revealed that he had written the song with a very specific issue in mind: civil rights in the U.S. Although he has mentioned the connection several times over the decades, it was particularly poignant when he talked about his inspiration during a 2016 concert in Little Rock, Arkansas."

from INTERESTING FACTS

**

FALLING ASLEEP AT A CONCERT

Unicio J. Violi fell
Asleep
In such a way
No one would suspect,
Forefinger at his temple
As if he were 
Constant to the cello's play.

At length, inverted mordents
Tumbled in little spies
To nibble 
At his ear, to tweak
His nose, or twine
About his hair. Scores of nubile

ladies laved all nakedly,
& the melodic garden
Of his sleep
Sprawled oblivious
To all the gelid keys,
Goldenrod & amethyst,
Moon-piqued rivers in a sweep

To Xanthus & beyond.
Pianissimo,
The lark spirited to heaven;
A hawk,
Startled from its lune,
Struck a vibrant chord to run

In frantic shadow
Above the orchards & the vines.
Pleached among the river-banks,
A fair heather
Forgedv the consequence
of his imagination. How many times

He wavered upon the brink
Of love only to fall down
Mightily,
Exhaling a sigh, a constellation
Dipping in precise
Orchestral shining,
The lunar surface of apparition

Cleaved upon his sight
Until every corner
Of his fugued garden glistened.
Gossamer ladies in a tryst
Measured their nakedness
In fraxinalla. 
A fox sobbed, he listened.

Thrush & lark poured forth
A stave of radiance,
Light was liquid 
In his throat, as he danced
In fluid merriment
Until a single trumpet bid

Him wake. He woke with a start
& left the world behind.

Louis Phillips

Paul Gauguin. Landscape in Brittany. Los Angeles County Museum.
**

travel (v.)
late 14c., "to journey," from travailen (1300) "to make a journey," originally "to toil, labor" (see travail). The semantic development may have been via the notion of "go on a difficult journey," but it also may reflect the difficulty of any journey in the Middle Ages. Replaced Old English faran. Related: Traveled; traveling. Traveled (adj.) "having made journeys, experienced in travel" is from early 15c. Traveling salesman is attested from 1885.

Etymological Dictionary On Line
**

RICHARD GID POWERS VISITS PARIS

 “I’m in Paris now  which is a GREAT place for not seeing UFOs. Or if they do see UFOs and say they do, they talk funny here so I can’t understand what they’re saying, if they say they see them or they don’t see ‘em, all sounds the same to me. "

from his Chosie Humor Post for October 7, 2023

**

SOWETO, SOUTH AFRICA

“Soweto was designed to be bombed –that’s how forward-thinking the architects of apartheid were. The township was a city unto itself, with a population of nearly one million. There were only two roads in and out. That was so the military could lock us in, quell any rebellion. And if the monkeys ever went crazy and tried to break out of their cage, the air force could fly over and bomb the shit out of everyone. Growing up, I never knew that my grandmother lived in the center of a bull’s eye.”

Trevor Noah. Born a Crime (
**

EVERY SAILOR NEEDS A FRIEND

“Somewhere in the Southern ocean, as the immortal Captain Joshua Slocum recounted in his journal Around the World in the Sloop Spray, he was touched to discover that his loneliness was ephemeral. An intrepid spider in the cabin was spinning sidewise while he spun forward, and the knowledge of their companionship inspirited him for the rigors that lay ahead.”

S.J. Perelman. “ Looking For Pussy” in Eastward Ha!
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1977)

**
an excerpt from "The Accidental Hotel," about The Atlanta Hotel, a budget hotel in Bangkok by Donald A. Ranard

"It was the kind of place travelers were always looking for, a combination restaurant, café, and bistro, where you could get a good, inexpensive meal, linger for hours over coffee, or while away a hot afternoon over beer. It was a natural gathering place, and what was best about the restaurant was what was best about the hotel: the mix of people. In an age of niche marketing, The Atlanta was an anomaly,; it cut across the usual segregating categories of age, class, and lifestyle. There were has-been hippies and would be hipsters, clean-cut college students and backpacking grandmothers, budget-minded families and middle-aged men on a Bangkok debauch, German scholars of Thai Buddhism, Swedish relief workers on R&R from Cambodia, blue-collar Brits, freelance writers, one or two indigents, and on the sidelines, quietly studying the show, a contingent of local day trippers that included, every Sunday at noon, a small group of That Baptists from a neighborhood church."

From:
Donald A Ranard
The Accidental Hotel
The Best Travel Writing 2005

**

WOBURN, MASSACHUSETTS

“I had come from Woburn, Massachusetts, a fine 
New England town noted for its rambunctious biker
gangs, its indicted and convicted mayors and the 
worse toxic-waste dumping grounds in the United 
States. But it’s also an old colonial city with 
a bronze minuteman on the town green guarding 
the white-shingled Methodist church and a great 
ivy-covered library with a statue of Count Rumford 
on its front lawn.”

Eric Bogosian. Drinking in America (New York:
Vintage Books, 1987)
**
FOR THE FANS OF THE LEGEND & LORE 
OF KING ARTHUR

“ A cold, wind driven rain soaks through my parka as I
walk across a narrow foot-bridge that links the Cornwall mainland in southwest England to a rocky promontory
overlooking the Bristol Channel. Far below this cantilevered span, waves crash against the cliffs and swirl
inside a grotto known as Merlin’s Cave.”

Joshua Hammer. “The Forever Legend” in Smithsonian
Magazine (September 2022)
**
People also ask about the fictional cave of Merlin

“What is inside Merlin's cave?"
Inside Merlin's Cave contains Numerous poems, commentaries, prophecies and plays, including the full text of Thomas Hardy's Queen of Cornwall, that establish Cornwall not just as the birthplace of King Arthur but as a source of all Arthurian themes.”

Internet: Merlin's Cave
**

LOVE, WHEN YOU GO

It is not as if
I weigh so much,
Though I am not air,
But when you go,
Say you left behind
An unmade bed,
Shirts upon a chair;
Be of such a mind
That the way back
Is clear & well-defined.

It is not as if
I were necessary baggage
With handles to grasp,
But when you go,
Say you left such
& such behind.
Think as you gauge
Your steps, my hand
In your hand,
My steps with your steps,
& when you stop
To rest, know
Wind's touch & my touch.
Love, when you go ,
Take me with you,
It is not as if
I weigh so very very much...

Louis Phillips 

ON ICE & ELECTRICITY
" As any bartender will tell you, a cocktail flung back
and forth over ice inside a shaker inside a shaker gets
cold very fast. "The amount of energy you get from melting
ice is phenomenal," Arnold* told me. Calculator in hand, he
explained that if you shake three and a half ounces of
tempered ice for 12 seconds, you'll generate about 2,000
watts of power on average. This amount is roughly the
maximum load that can be safely drawn from a typical
American hom*e's electric outlet. "There's no real other
way to...extract that much heat from something as quickly,"
Arnold said.

* see Liquid Intelligence: The Art and Science
of the Perfect Cocktail, by food scientist Dave Arnold

Amy Brady. "Shake, Chill, Froth, Dilute, Disdard" in Scientific American (July/August 2023)
**

THE MIGRATION OF BUTTERFLIES & THE SPIRITS OF DEAD WARRIORS

“In pre-Columbian times, this migration involved even more butterflies than the mind-boggling one billion that fly to central Mexico today and the insects may have once overwintered much closer to cities such as Teotihuacan and the Mexica capital of Tenochtitlan in forests that no longer exist. ‘Observing so many monarch butterflies every year at the same time may have been the basis for the idea of the return of dead warriors to the world of the living,’ says (JESPER) Nielsen* “The monarchs arrive from the north, and in traditions in central Mexico, that cardinal direction is associated with death.”

*Jesper Nielsen is a Mesoamericanist at the University of
Copenhagen.

Eric A. Powell. “Mexico’s Butterfly Warriors” in Archaeology (November/December 2022)
**
HUMMINGBIRDS & CARLA BANK, THE WIFE OF ISHMAEL REED

“When Bank mentioned that a hummingbird frequented the garden, 
I wondered aloud why the Aztecs had chosen the bird as an 
emblem of their war god, Reed answered instantly. “They go 
right for the eyes.”

Julian Lucas. “I Ain’t Mean Enough” in The New Yorker
 (July 26, 2021)
**
THE ADVANTAGES OF SMALL HORSES

“There are many advantages to smaller horses (Around the World: England, March/April 2022),. Faster mounting and dismounting are important in battle and much easier on a small steed. Better clearance while charging throughmwoods is of prime concern when chasing or being chased. Small horses also live longer, and finally, you’ll take a shorter fall. Thanks for your fine publication.”

                         Christi S. Driggs
                               Tucson, AZ
“
From Our Readers” in Letters. Archaeology (May/June 2022)
**

ON CRICKET & GOLF

“Contrary to what its detractors say, cricket is not 
an inherently snobbish game, as Mr. Blunden is careful to point out. Since it needs about twenty-five people to make up a game it necessarily leads to a good deal of social mixing. The inherently snobbish game is golf, which causes whole stretches of countryside to be turned into carefully guarded class preserves.”
                                                               George Orwell

**


THE SECRET MEANING OF SNEEZES

“Michael Scot, a 13th century astrologer, claimed that it is possible to foretell the business future by an accurate interpretation of sneezes. ‘After a contract has been drawn up, if you sneeze once, the contract will be kept, but id you sneeze three times it will be broken. To make your business venture successful, sneeze twice or four times, then stand up and walk about.’”


Philip Ward A Dictionary of Common Fallacies (Boston:
The Atlantic Press, 1978)

**
SALT & BAD LUCK

“During the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci strengthened the association between spilled salt and misfortune by depicting Judas with a saltcellar knocked over next to him in his painting “The Last Supper.”

From INTERESTING FACTS website
**

ON THE HAIRCUT KNOWN AS THE D.A.


The ducktail, sometimes known as a D.A. (short for “duck’s”... behind), was the swept-back coiffure choice for disaffected young men of the 1950s. The hairstyle was the brainchild of Philadelphian barber Joseph Cirello, who would eventually move to Hollywood to give the “D.A.” to everyone from Elvis to James Dean.
Source: Google News
https://www.historyquiz.com/quiz/60e87a6e727bed00095896cc?utm_source=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=6413e10c816737929b888715
**

"The little piece of magennta-coated paper featured in this
catalogue is, for its size and weight, the most valuable 
single onject in the world. It is the British Guiana 'One
Cent' postage stamp issued in 1856 during an emergency
shortage of regular stamps and is now estimated to be
worth from twenty to fifty million times its original cost.
No one has ever been able to suggest any other object in
the history of the world which has had this great an
increment in value."

from the 371st sale catalogue of Rarities of the World.
Robert A. Siegel Auctions.
**
Who owns the rarest stamp in the world?
World's rarest stamps - The Postal Museum
The stamp was last sold at Sotheby's in 
New York for $8.3 million. The auction 
winner was the stamp dealer Stanley Gibbons.
**

FROM THE CLASS LISTINGS FOR PHILLIPS' UNIVERSITY

The Early Films of Walt Disney (3 credits)

At last, a real Mickey Mouse course!

"I wonder what you'd look like dressed."
           Jane to Tarzan in Tarzan the Ape Man
**
HOW DO YOU KNOW IF YOU ARE SUITED FOR SHOW BUSINESS

Warner Baxter claimed to have an early pre-disposition toward show business: "I discovered a boy a block away who would eat worms and swallow flies for a penny. For one-third of the profits, I exhibited him in a tent." 
iDMb 
**
A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF MAE WEST

"A plumber's idea of Cleopatra" 
                        -- W.C. Fields
**
THE FIRST TELEVISION GAG ON FILM-- in INTERNATIONAL HOUSE

"So, granted a free hand, Fields walked into a room where a television set was turned on, and saw  (RUDY) Vallee on the screen, and without hesitation pulled out a revolver and shot him, the crooner falling dead instantly. It was the first television joke of a kind that is still growing strong."


Robert Lewis Taylor. W.C. Fields: His Follies & Fortunes 
(Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1949)

**

 LEAVE 'EM HANGING

"Hang" ‘Em High, starring Clint Eastwood, is loosely based on Homer Croy’s book, He Hanged Them High. While the film’s connection to Homer Croy’s book is uncredited, there are numerous similarities between the film and the story by Croy; including the title of the two works, certain reoccurring terminology (the phrase ‘Tumbleweed wagon”), and the characterization of the judge. Significant for its violent and stylized view of the executions, Hang ‘Em High is notable in its visual presentation and mixed message regarding frontier justice.
    As in Croy’s book, the Judge character is in control of the executions, nodding at the hangman to begin the execution. While Judge Parker never attended any of the executions that occurred during his tenure, Hang ‘Em High not only places him at the scene, but also actively involves him, setting up the mythology of the Judge standing at the window, watching the executions out of a sense of duty.
Further reinforcing the mythology established in the narrative of He Hanged Them High, a condensed version of the novel appeared in True magazine in April of 1952. Accompanying the article was an illustration depicting an angry, absorbed judge, looking out his window to the gallows featuring six hanging nooses and a large crowd. It is significant to note that scenes almost identical to this illustration are used in the film, demonstrating the power of the imagery contained in Croy’s book.
In the film, the hangings are all depicted as public, with children sitting on a fence watching and a massive crowd in attendance. The federal court’s role is played down, accentuating the Judge’s obsession with ridding the land 
of bad men.

https://www.nps.gov/fosm/learn/photosmultimedia/hang_em_high.htm#:~:text=Hang%20'Em%20High%20is%20typical,on%20the%20Fort%20Smith%20story.
**
HOW RAY MILLAND LEARNED TO ACT

"The star says he learned to act by going to the movies 
to watch Frederic March on the screen. 'I admired the frank theatricalism of March and still do. His overacting is admirable,' Milland says. From Walter Huston and Edward G. Robinson he learned economy of expression. 'Learning to act is hard. In one picture I spent two full days trying to walk naturally through a door." Milland likes to go to movies, 
but he still 'shudders' to see himself on the screen..."
 
CURRENT BIOGRAPHY , 1946
**
 
ASIAN ACTORS IN HOLLYWOOD 1920's to late in the 20th Century

"Miscegenation was illegal on the screen and off. A Chinese person or any peerson of color could not
be shown kissing someone white. Hollywood turned instead to actors of European descent in yellowface
to play Asian roles.

Casey Schwartz. "Reviled, Revered and Now Researched," about Anna Mae Wong in The New York Times
(August 22, 2023).

l. See Mickey Rooney's embarassing imitation of an Asian in Breakjfast at Tiffanys (1961).Beyond
cringeworthy.

2. " ... the Honolulu-based (CHARLIE)  Chan was played by (in order of appearance) George Kuwa (1885-1931), Sojin Kamiyama (1884-1954), E. L. Park (1876-1948), Warner Oland (1879-1938), Manuel Arbo (1898-1973), Sidney Toler (1874-1947), Roland Winters (1904-1989), Ross Martin (1920-1981), and Peter Ustinov (1921-2004).""
3. The main players in the 1937 film of Pearl Buck's The Good Earth, Paul Muni, Luise Rainer,Walter 
Connolly et.al. played Chinese characters.
**
ON SHOOTING THE GRAVEYARD SCENE IN SHANE

"In the funeral scene, the dog consistently refused to 
look into the grave. Finally, director George Stevens 
had the dog's trainer lie down in the bottom of the grave,
 and the dog played his part ably. The coffin (loaded 
with rocks for appropriate effect) was then lowered 
into the grave, but when the harmonica player began to 
play "Dixie" spontaneously, the crew was so moved by 
the scene that they began shoveling dirt into the grave
 before remembering the dog's trainer was still there."

iDMb Trivia -"Shane"

**
A COARSE  COMMON POEM

In the film version of Great Expectations
When the  coarse common boy
Cared for by his sister
& a coarse common blacksmith
Blows his nose into a handkerchief,
I reach for my handkerchief
& blow my nose.
Such is the power of art.


Louis Phillips

"My vocabulary loosened up during my freshman year
at Berkeley, and I was quite pleased when my mother
remarked that the more educated I got the more I
sounded like a truck driver."
                                Pauline Kael
The New Yorker, October 18, 1969
**
CECIL B. DEMILLE MADE THE MOVIE - THE SQUAW WOMAN
"Of the words borrowed from the Indian squaw has not 
fared has not fared so well, although it began without prejudice. In various Algonquian Indian languages, it 
could be translated as 'woman,' 'young woman,' Queen,
'or 'Lady.' In the English of New England, as early 
as 1622, squaw was used as a modifier in the phrase 
squa sachim, meaning an Indian ruler who was a woman. 
By 1634, English speakers were using squawk to refer 
to any Indian Woman..."

David K. Barnhart and Allan A. Metcalf. America In So Many Words: Words That Have Shaped America {New York: Houghton
 Miffln Company, 1997)
**

If the  novelist Carolyn See had been able to spot 
George Bernard Shaw walking past a children's playground 
on a beach, the following sentences could be written:

See saw sea see-saws.  "See Shaw see sea see-saws," 
See said.
**
A BIT ABOUT COD

"In the English-speaking West Indies, salt fish is the common name for salt cod. In slang, salt fish means 'a woman's genitals,' and while Caribbeans do love their salt cod, it is this other meaning that is responsible for the frequent appearance of the word saltfish in Caribbean songs such as the Mighty Sparrow's 'Saltfish.'

Mark Kurlansky. COD (New York: Penguin Books, 1997)

To see & hear the lyrics to SALTFISH, go to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ER-tjMwODM
**
ON THE NAME CARIBBEAN

Caribbean (adj.)
"of or pertaining to the Caribs," also "of the sea 
between the West Indies and the South American mainland,"
 by 1750s, from Carib, indigenous people's name for 
themselves, + -ean.

Carib (n.)
"one of a native people of Central America and northern South America and formerly of the Caribbean," 1550s, from Spanish Caribe, from Arawakan (West Indies) kalingo, karina, or kalino, said to mean "brave ones" or else "strong men." As an adjective by 1881.

from the ONLINE ETMOLOGICAL DICTIONARY
**
Robert Scotto sent me the following quotation
 from Manhattan Beach: A Novel by Jennifer Egan
	
"So much speech is derived from the sea, from “keeled over” to “learning the ropes” to “catching the drift” to “freeloader” to “gripe” to “brace up” to “taken aback” to “leeway” to “low profile” to “the bitter end,” or the very last link on a chain.
**
DOROTHY PARKER AT THE DINNER TABLE

"And when the table gossip turned to an actress who 
had fallen and broken a leg in London, Mrs. Parker 
seemed distraught: "Oh, how horrible," she muttered
 to her neighbor at the table. "She must have done 
it sliding down a barrister."

John Keats. The Life and Times of Dorothy Parker: 
You Might As Well Live (New York: Simon & Schuster ,1970)
**
EIGHTY-SIX

"It comes from 1930s soda-counter slang meaning that 
an item was sold out. Eighty-six is slang meaning 
"to throw out," "to get rid of," or "to refuse service
 to." It comes from 1930s soda-counter slang meaning 
that an item was sold out." It has been suggested 
that the phrase may have originated as rhyming slang 
for NIX (meaning to cancel).

"Get the hell out of here!" he roared. "You're eighty-six'd, you hear me! Get out! And don't come back."

from Fooling Houdini by Alex North (New York, HarpetCollins, 2012)
**
THE FILM "LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL BLIMP"(l943)-- 
THE USE OF THE TERM "CONCENTRATION CAMP

"Clive Candy goes to Germany to fight a duel over propaganda about the British treatment of people in South Africa in the Boer War. Many of the cited things he was dueling over were, in fact, true. "Concentration camp" was first used to describe British camps in South Africa in 1899-1902."

iDMb Trivia - THE FILM "LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL 
BLIMP"(l943)--
**
ON THE IDEA OF KISMET
"Kismet first entered the English language in 1834, but it wasn’t popularized until 1876, as the title of a book. Kismet is a Victorian novel by George Fleming, the pseudonym of American writer Julia Constance Fletcher. She had learned about the concept of kismet when she visited Egypt, and noveled around it, her tale centering on a group of white travelers falling in and out of love, floating down the Nile in their dahabeahs. The book is an ode to the mysterious workings of the heart, to the surprising antilogic of destiny. 
Kismet is given credit for bringing my parents together. When I think about it now, as an adult, I find it difficult to believe. But they insist it is the truth. It is a fact that my mother saw my father for the first time across a crowded cafeteria, that she froze, pointed, and said to her friend: “It’s him.” Never mind that she didn’t know who he was, that she had sworn off men, that he was definitely younger than she. She felt a flash of recognition at the sight of him, and this could not be ignored. She told her friend she would marry this man, whoever he was."
Word: Kismet by Hilal Isler in THE BELIEVER (SUMMER 2023)

Kismet is a musical adapted by Charles Lederer and Luther Davis from the 1911 play of the same name by Edward Knoblock, with lyrics and musical adaptation by Robert Wright and George Forrest. The music was mostly adapted from several pieces composed by Alexander Borodin. 
Wikipedia

**

IN MEDIA RES

Let me start in the middle of things.
Why not,
We are always in the middle of things.

Were you in the middle of something?
I don’t mean
To interrupt. Continue with something

To do, but no matter what you do
There is more
To be done. What else can we do,

Running from one chore to another?
You, amid
Some intimate drama or another

While I try to hold your attention
For a few minutes.,
Pause, Now a let-down of attention

Until the pipes & timbrels of time
Call us away,
Suspended as we are for a brief time

Between the beginning & the end,

Louis Phillips



**

THE LONGEST LAUGH IN TV HISTORY?
LUCY DOES THE TANGO
“Lucy decides to raise chickens and ends up hiding
dozens of eggs in her clothing—right before Ricky
suggests they practice the tango. Can Lucy keep the
eggs in one piece while Ricky tries to hold her close?
The episode ends with another Lucy mess. This
episode got what many say is the longest laugh in
TV history: sixty-five seconds!  The laugh was so long
It had to be shortened for TV,”

Pam Pollack and Meg Belviso.  Who Was  Lucille Ball
(New York: Penguin Viking, 2017)
**
  
OR WAS THIS THE LONGEST LAUGH?

 
Q. Paul, what is a good reason for pounding meat?
A. Paul Lynde: Loneliness!
  (The audience laughed so long and hard it took up almost 15 minutes of the show.)
 
On THE HOLLYWOOD SQUARES

**

FROM ANNA SHUSTER

In the early 1950s in Montreal, several Jewish families in the western part of the city decided it was time to form a new Synagogue. One of ways to raise funds was to raffle off a newly donated TV set (Canada had its 1st TV channel by then). My dad received a number of raffle books to sell on our block. He never had the time to go door-to-door so in the end he just put in his money, and guess what? We won the set, just in time for Queen Elizabeth’s coronation. In Quebec, the 1 channel ran 50% in English and 50% in French until CBC developed a 2nd channel.

**
SOMETIMES SPONSORS CAN BE VERY WRONG

After the broadcast of the very first episode of I Love Lucy, “not all were pleased with what they saw. Perhaps the most discontented was the president of Philip Morris, one O. Parker McComas. After viewing the initial I Love Lucy he called the Blow agency to ask how much it would cost to cancel the show. The cigarette commercials came across well, he conceded, but as for the episode itself – in his view it was ‘unfunny, silly and totally boring.”



Stefan Kanfer. Ball of Fire: The Tumultuous Life and Comic Art of Lucille Ball (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 2003)

**

CBS CENSORS AND AN EPISODE OF M*A*S*H

“The most striking example to me was early in the series. Radar(Gary Burghof) is explaining to somebody that he’s unfamiliar with something . And he said, “I’m a virgin at that, sir.” With no sexual context. It was just  that he’d never done something before. And the CBS censor said: ‘You can’t say the word ‘virgin.’ That’s forbidden.’  So the next week (Larry) Gelbart  wrote a little scene that had nothing to do with anything. A patient is being carried through on a stretcher. And I say, ‘Where you from, son?’ And he says, ‘The Virgin
Islands.’

Alan Alda.,”The Heart of M*A*S*H Looks Back by
Saul Austerlitz in The New York Times (September22, 2022)
**
COLUMBUS MAY NOT HAVE DISCOVERED AMERICA 
BUT AMERICA DISCOVERED COLUMBO

“It became clearly evident during rehearsals  that the plot of thenplay did not concern a doctor who murdered his wife and was subsequently apprehended by a bumbling detective. Rather itnconcerned a bumbling detective *who put together sufficient evidence to convict a murderer who happened to be a doctor. The detective’s name was Columbo. In later years, Peter Falk would don the same wrinkled trench coat and play to more viewers in one night than our
Rx: Murder tour could attract in fifty years, instead of a fifty-week run.”

* Thomas Mitchell was the first actor on stage to portray Columbo.

Joseph Cotton. Vanity Will Get You Somewhere (San Francisco: Mercury  House, 1987)..

**

MAD ABOUT CRIMINAL TV

The September 1961 issue of MAD magazine featured a graphic spread called “Television Programs…aimed at Late, Late, Audiences” by writer Frank Jacobs and artist Wallace Wood. Among the imaginary shows was a TV program created especially for criminals, e.g:

     “The time is now 3:07 – just 23 minutes before
      nightwatchman Charlie Zorch, at Barney’s
      Diamond Outlet, takes off for his coffee break!
        And here’s a flash just handed me…the
        candy store at 12th and Main will be a snap
        tonight! Patrolman O’Malley is cross-town,
        raiding Overdue Library Book Borrowers. "                                         **
CAROL BURNETT

Carol Burnett
Cd take an unfunny line & turn it
Into something socko or something fine.
I wish she wd do the same for this final line.

**
TV NOTE #7542

Howdy Doody
Was rarely moody.
**
KATIE COURIC SIGNS OFF
BY QUOTING HAMLET, BY
ACKNOWLEDGING SHE HAD MET
RICHARD M. NIXON

Katie Couric,
Ending her newscast, sighed: "Alas, poor Yorick!
I knew him..."
Was it a new signature sign off, or merely a whim?

**   
TALLULAH BANKHEAD IN A PUBLIC BATHROOM

"In a public toilet devoid of tissue, Tallulah called 
to the woman in the next stall: 'I beg your pardon, 
darling, do you have any toilet tissue?' 'No,' replied 
the woman. 'Well, then, darling,' Tallulah said,
'do you have two fives for  a ten?''

Denis Brian. Tallulah, Darling (New York: MacMillan 
Publishing Company, 1980)
**
THE GREAT HOUDINI

Famed magician and escapologist Harry Houdini was quite an animal lover. He owned several dogs, as well as an eagle named Abraham Lincoln. Billed as "the only tame eagle in the world," Abraham Lincoln accompanied Houdini on tour and appeared in a patriotic show at the Hippodrome in New York City. Each night, the eagle would emerge from the folds of an American flag.
Source: Wild About Houdini
History quiz--March 14, 2023

**
THE GREAT SARAH BERNHARDT

In an unsigned article in The Economist (April 15th, 2023). the columnist claimed that Satah Bernhardt was the first modern celebrity:
"She owned a vast menagerie of exotic animals which included a cheetah and an alligator, and kept a satin-lined coffin in her bedroom in which she sometimes slept. It was Bernhardt herself who provided the press with a photograph of the coffin, for she understood the importance of self-mythologising. She cannily took advantage of the latest technology to disseminate her image around the world."
**
**
A brief description of Winston Churchill:

"He was at home with lightning.'
Leo Rosten.

**
WINSTON CHURCHILL & ETHEL BARRYMORE

"Churchill had fallen in love with Ethel Barrymore 
when he was a member of parliament in his twenties 
and she was a teenage actress on the London stage. 
Churchill arranged for Ethel to meet Neville Chamberlain 
and Lord Roseberry at a dinner party, as a test, to 
see if she would enjoy living in a political atmosphere 
and listening to political conversation. The trial-run
 was a mistake. Ethel was bored and turned down his 
marriage proposal. But they remained life-long friends."

Denis Brian. Tallulah,Darling (New York: MacMillan 
Publishing Co., 1980)
**

*
THE POET MAKES A DESPERATE ATTEMPT
TO MAKE MONEY FROM CLERIHEW WRITING
 
Eartha Kitt –
I wonder if she ever got caught
In flagrante delicto with Orson Welles?
(I know this is stupid, but celebrity gossip sells!)

**


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 frown 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

**
V.S. NAIPAUL

I invited V.
S. Naipaul to be interviewed on TV.
But he did not R.S.V.
P. because he was reading Pynchon's V.

**
HENRY FUSELI

Henry Fuseli --
I wanted to write something silly
For Henry,
But right now I feel too ornery.

LJP