fauxklore | Entries tagged with quotations

Before I write about the NPL con, I have some notes I scribbled about other things I meant to write about.

Celebrity Death Watch: Betty Ford was an interesting character, a feisty woman who spoke her mind. Her honesty about subjects like drug addiction and breast cancer made a real difference to our national dialogue.

Sherwood Schwartz, on the other hand, just created silly TV shows with earworm-infested theme songs.

Bears: I don't think I ever passed along the news story about the car accident in which one vehicle hit a bear, propelling it into the air and through the windshield of another car. The people in the second car were killed, as was the bear. That has to be a majorly unlucky way to go.

Today's news brings the story of a bear wandering into the area as a park ranger was giving a talk on bear safety.

Alaska men While I was in Alaska in June, one of the women who works out there told me that people think her social life should be great but "while the odds are good, the goods are odd." That reminds me of a friend who lives in Fairbanks telling me she treated the local men as being on a catch and release program.

Movies: I saw two movies recently, thanks to my flights to and from Zurich. Paul was very enjoyable since the story of two British nerds meeting an alien and trying to save him from the big bad government guys is exactly the sort of thing I'm the target demographic for. I watched Take Me Home Tonight largely on the grounds that the main character was supposed to be an MIT alumnus. Alas, it was silly teenage fare about rich kids with nothing better to do than obsess about their high school crushes.

And, of course, I won't write about those items in order.

Better House and Office Keeping: I am trying to do in-processing for my new job and out-processing from my current job. This is all very chaotic and stressful and threw me into a brief "why am I doing this?" moment. Then I got asked to cover a last minute meeting yesterday and remembered why I was doing it. It wasn't that it was that terrible a meeting. It's just that the only reason we needed someone there had to do with politics, not usefulness. That will, of course, never happen with the new job :)

I have also verified that Pink Martini provides the best soundtrack for office cleaning, assuming one does not mind the earworm side effect. (Which is, curiously enough, "Amado Mio" rather than "Sympathique.")

Metro haiku: Summer brings crowds and bad behavior. Hence, I feel compelled to offer this etiquette lesson.

There are 50 folks
standing in this car. Don't take
up a seat with bags.

Company: I went to see the filmed version of Company on Sunday afternoon. I enjoyed it for the most part, but I still prefer live theatre for the immediacy and intimacy. Also, Stephen Colbert is not much of a singer. My biggest quibble is that you are so close to the faces, you are forced to see where they hid the mikes in people's hair. Inevitably, I find myself thinking it looks like the actors have bugs on their faces.

Still, it is a great score and I do recognize that productions like this do provide access to shows for people who live in places lacking in theatre. Or people who think theatre is too expensive. (Although $18 for a movie version is awfully steep. I actually got $12 off by using a free movie coupon I had from some refund offer or other.)

Two other comments re: the show:
1) the theatre I saw it at stopped it for intermission several minutes too early, making an odd interruption to the scene with Amy's wedding. Very bizarre.

2) While "Another Hundred People" is a definite show stopper, it is also profoundly depressing.

Shakespeare: No, I did not go to a Shakespeare play. It may be surprising but I have seen exactly one Shakespeare play in my life. That was a production of Measure for Meaure that I saw on a particularly bad date in my undergraduate days. (The badness was entirely on my part and can be summarized as 19 year old Miriam still cared too much about other people's opinions, so did not give a fair chance to a guy who some of her friends did not care for. But she really wanted to see the play. I like to think I've grown up. Or at least stopped talking about myself in the third person.)

Anyway, what I did go to was the MIT Club of Washington Partners and Patrons event Monday night, which featured Michael Kahn, the director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company, as the speaker. He gave a lively and entertaining talk about the theatre environment in Washington. Curiously, I'd had a conversation on pretty much the same subject with a couple of folks at Dulles airport a couple of weeks ago. The short version is that there is a lot of theatre in Washington, but people who don't live here don't seem to know that. In a way, I think that is advantageous, since it allows theatre companies to put on more challenging shows, instead of the splashy big productions that tourists flock to.

Another interesting point came up during a conversation after the talk. Most of theatre companies can ease their financial burden by mixing a few big shows with ones that have small casts. But all of the classical pieces that a company like Shakespeare Theatre Company does have large casts, so their finances are inherently more challenging.

Finally, during the talk Michael Kahn mentioned that their upcoming production of The Merchant of Venice is set in 1920's New York. The logic is apparently a similar ethnic mix. This made me at least somewhat interested in the show, though I have no idea where I would find time to see it.

Quote of the Day: Found in a memo in my office, was the description of a program as having "not managed to deliver anything except schedule delays."

A transit system birthday haiku:
The Metro System
is now 35 years old
and showing its age.

Celebrity deaths: There are a lot of recent celebrity deaths. In the political world, I'll note both Warren Christopher and Geraldine Ferraro. In show biz, there was Farley Granger and, of course, Elizabeth Taylor. (Oddly, I think the only one of Liz's movies I've seen is A Little Night Music.) The literary world lost Dianna Wynne Jones. And, most significantly to me, the sports world lost Lou Gorman, the general manager of the Red Sox from 1984-1993.

A strange work-related thought: If the sky is falling, will that create orbital debris?

A strange work-related quote: "Anything human-created in space would have had to be launched."

Another incomprehensible note to myself: I have no idea why, but I wrote down the phrase "SoLo(W)" in my planner.

A strange observation prompted by a voicemail message I got this week: It must be particularly inconvenient to have a lisp if your name starts with "S."

Trivia about the Old Dominion: Someone asked me this a couple of weeks ago and I just got around to googling the answer. Virginia has 95 counties and 29 independent cities.

Not really a political observation: Antonin Scalia was ticketed for his role ina 4-car accident on the George Washington Parkway this week. I wonder if he will fight the ticket.

Good news in the book world, part 1: Politics and Prose (a very good independent bookstore in D.C.) has found a buyer. Actually, a pair of buyers.

Good news in the book world, part 2: The newest No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency novel, The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party is just as charming as the previous books in the series. I particularly liked how Charlie (one of the apprentices at the garage) was handled.

I still have other things to write about, but will do so separately.

Puzzles: The rather silly title of this entry (which translates to "a collection of scraps") is a minor tribute to the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, which is this weekend. I can't attend due to my commitment to the Virginia Storytelling Gathering, but I want to wish happy solving to my friends who will be there.

Also, while I am on the subject of puzzles, I recently read Eugene Maleska's Across and Down, his 1984 book about the crossword puzzle world. It was amusing to see references to people like Mike Shenk and Merl Reagle as new constructors. (Neither had sold a puzzle to the New York Times when this book was written.) Will Shortz is described as "a budding young word expert." One expects the players to change in 25+ years, of course. But the main thing I want to mention is that the puzzles in the back reminded me how much the puzzles have changed. I prefer the current type, which tend to have more wordplay and fewer obscure crossword words.

Celebrity Death Watch: I have two celebrity deaths to note. The first is Hugh Martin, who wrote some familiar songs, such as "The Trolley Song" and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." The other is Shifra Lerer, who was a major star of Yiddish theatre. She was discovered by Boris Tomashefsky (probably best known nowadays as the grandfather of Michael Tilson Thomas). Yiddish theatre is a dying world and there can't be too many of its big names left.

Vacation planning: I will be spending my birthday in the Faroe Islands. This is a place I've been interested in since reading Tim Severin's The Brendan Voyage back in the 1980's. (By the way, I read the book because of Shaun Davey's orchestral suite based on it. I couldn't read certain sections without hearing Liam O'Flynn on uillean pipes in the background.) Anyway, I've booked flights in and out of Iceland and the ferry to and from the Faroes. The flights are not really great value for my frequent flyer miles, but I have a lot of Alaska Air miles and I tend to like to use miles, not hoard them. I have barely started researching the land part, which requires me to get from Reykjavik to and from Seydisfjordur. Apparently, one can either fly or take a bus to Egilsstadir and there is daily bus from there. Bus service in eastern Iceland is relatively complicated but that is precisely what makes this plan my sort of trip. And I have over five months to sort it out. I should probably also learn how to pronounce "Seydisfjordur" somewhere along the way. (As a reminder to myself, I also need to research how to get to Gulfoss Falls, which is claimed to be one of the most spectacular waterfalls in the world and is somewhere in Iceland.)

Quote of the week: At a staff meeting this week, someone described what he is working on by saying, "The only stable thing on this project is me."

Absurdity at work: I got a phone call the other day from my company's emergency hotline. Several of the regional offices were doing a tornado drill and I was instructed to go to an interior office. The absurdity is that they called again in five minutes with an "all clear." I have an interior office so this was not a real issue. But, if somebody had to actually leave their office to comply with the instructions, there was no way for them to get the all clear. (I discovered later in the day that they had also emailed the instructions, which has the same problem.)

Not a mysterious note to myself: In a couple of months, I am sure I will be trying to figure out what "Perken-NTIA" means. Actually, I was reminding myself, that Ken told me (i.e. "per Ken") that the source for a particular policy is the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. At some point I will also probably forget that "Norms Project" belongs to Audrey, not Norm. (The latter would, of course, need an apostrophe.)

Snacko: The space folks are not being totally ignored by whoever stocks the snacko. They have added Starburst. Admittedly, I don't see the point in most non-chocolate candies, but this still amuses me.

Awesome Concert: I went to darkest Maryland Wednesday night to see Pierre Bensusan perform at the Takoma Park Community Center. Fortunately, that's not too bad a walk from the metro, which alleviates most of my complaints about Maryland. He was in particularly fine form, musically. He was also much chattier than he had been at his January concert at Jammin' Java. The running theme of the evening was that Pierre kept asking the sound guy for "more reverb." At some point, someone in the audience called out "more cowbell" and then had to explain the reference. Pierre picked up on that and in the intro to another piece talked about the farm he lives on, mentioned that they don't have a cow but do have a cat, and speculated about adding a "cat bell" to the song.

As for the music, he played a fine mix of old and new. I was especially pleased that he played "Agadir Ramadan," which is such an evocative piece. He continued the north African theme with a piece titled "Oran" and mentioned that he's been invited to go to that city (which is his birthplace, though he left at age 4) to perform with local musicians. All in all, I continue to be in awe of his virtuosity. Based on comments I heard from other people in the audience, I am not alone.

I entered the lotteries to win the opportunity to buy certain sought after Red Sox tickets. And I did well, having won an opportunity to buy tickets against the Source of All Evil in the Universe. Except, the ticket sale was Saturday and I was busily playing tourist in San Antonio and by the time I logged in, everything was gone on the one day I could actually go.

In a sense it doesn't quite matter because I had already guaranteed seeing two of those important battles for the fate of the universe by buying a pricy package through the Red Sox tour department. (It's August. Two games, hotel, reception with a player who I am sure will be someone other than Youk.)

The other lottery was for the opportunity to buy Green Monster seats. And, again, I won the opportunity. The tickets go on sale Saturday. I have friends coming over to play with my excess of arts and crafts supplies. One of them is from Maine, so will understand the important of my breaking away at noon to take advantage. Two of the others work with me and have some level of appreciation for how I feel about the Red Sox, though I had to explain what the Green Monster is to one of them. I am not sure if she believed my comparison to the black stone in the Ka'ba in Mecca.

I mention all of this primarily as an explanation of why my commute time reading the past couple of days has been The Red Sox Reader, edited by Dan Riley. It's horribly out of date, having been published in the heart of the depressing 1990's. But it is still entertaining, particularly as one of the pieces is a 1978 interview with Bill "Spaceman" Lee. He was being interviewed by a men's magazine and the reporter asked if he had lust in his heart. He replied, "No, I've got about four valves and an aorta coming out and a superior vena cava and a lot of other things."

By the way, he is 63, still pitching, and just as colorful as ever.

"Man has always been lionized for his physical prowess. An Indian brave did not have to pass a math quiz to become a chief, he just had to tear the ass off some bear. And the twelve labors of Hercules did not include a Regents' exam. Society has tended to find its heroes in the most obvious arenas, and I don't regard that as a healthy thing. We should find our heroes in the bathroom mirror each and every morning."

- Bill "Spaceman" Lee and Richard Lally, The Wrong Stuff

See you in 10 days or so.

This was the quote of the day in our Congressional report today. I have absolutely no idea what the context of it was, but it is nice to have a literate candidate for president.

"Righty right, me malenky droogs. Come with uncle and hear all proper! Hear angel trumpets and devil trombones. You are all invited. I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in their faces, with bootsie-woots if thou it suits. One thing I could never stand was to hear a filthy, dirty old partisan bushie, howling away his filthy songs and going blurpy blurp. Naughty, naughty, naughty! You filthy old soomkas!” --Sen Obama (D-IL) telling supporters to “get in the faces” of wavering voters.

(If you don't get it, I suggest you google a phrase like "nadsat glossary.")

I am a big fan of the Washington Post's Style Invitational contest. The results this week were more honorable mentions from last week and had to do with taking a passage of classic literature and rewriting it to be understandable to a resident of Los Angeles under the age of 40. I thought this take on a passage from Moby-Dick, about Ahab's hatred of the white whale was brilliant:

Stephen Dudzik, Olney: "One fish, screw fish, hate fish, rue fish. From prayer to glare, from tear to swear, evil whales are everywhere."