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“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 inContinue reading “BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: AMERICANA”

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,Continue reading “BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: COMICS & COMIC STRIPS”

“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 ofContinue reading “BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: THEATER”

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 toContinue reading “BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: MUSIC”

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 inContinue reading “BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: TRAVEL #2”

ON ICE & ELECTRICITY” As any bartender will tell you, a cocktail flung backand forth over ice inside a shaker inside a shaker getscold very fast. “The amount of energy you get from meltingice is phenomenal,” Arnold* told me. Calculator in hand, heexplained that if you shake three and a half ounces oftempered ice forContinue reading “BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: THIS & THAT (BUT MOSTLY THIS)”

“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.Continue reading “BITS & PLACES OF A MISPLACED LIFE:FILM #19”

“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 wordsContinue reading “BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: WORDS, WORDS, WORDS”

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. ThisContinue reading “BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: TELEVISION”

** 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, DarlingContinue reading “BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE:PEOPLE”