PART II
*** TO ME: Though they are called, ‘disposable’ razors, it doesn’t get easier the more time you spend with them.
*** The bigger they are, the harder i run.
*** I think it’s reasonable to believe that there could be a third Paul McCartney waiting in the wings.
*** Each time I […]
To me — t r e f o l o g y
BRUCE’S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: “Dead By Dawn”
Podcast: “Dead By Dawn — Transylvania Style Punk Rock Comp Version”
Artist: Manda and the Marbles
Info: The podcast is seven minutes and forty seconds long. It includes a song based on an EVIL DEAD movies. You can use free online editing equipment to create a track consisting of the song only and still have the complete podcast as another track.
“Many of you may be familiar with the Dead By Dawn that appeared on the album ‘More Seduction’ on Go Kart Records. This version pre-dated that one and was featured on a compilation put out by ‘Wornout Records’ called ‘Transylvania Style Punk Rock.’”
Price: $2 (USD) for podcast
Genre: Rock. Punk Rock.
Links:
Manda and the Marbles on Bandcamp
https://mandaandthemarbles.bandcamp.com
“Dead By Dawn — Transylvania Style Punk Rock Comp Version”
https://mandaandthemarbles.bandcamp.com/track/dead-by-dawn-transylvania-style-punk-rock-comp-version
Mishaps
• As you would expect, children’s author/illustrator Shel Silverstein, creator of The Giving Tree and Where the Sidewalk Ends, had some interesting experiences. While Mr. Silverstein worked for The Torch, the monthly school newspaper of Roosevelt University in Chicago, his boss once paid him not with money, but with a typewriter. And while he served in the Army during the Korean Way, he once got in trouble with his superior officers because the socks he was wearing with his uniform weren’t regulation issue — they were argyle.
• An amusing error appears in Alexander Theroux’s short biography of Edward Gorey, printed by Fantagraphics. At the bottom of p. 14, Mr. Theroux writes that Mr. Gorey “never sent thank-you notes.” However, at the top of the page appears a reproduction of a short note that Mr. Gorey sent to Mr. Theroux. The note says in part, “Thank you so much for the neat skull.”
• Many journalists keep copies of embarrassing typos and bloopers in headlines and stories. For example, a society editor wrote a story following the wedding of two socially prominent people in her town. The groom’s name was “Cockburns,” and this headline appeared above her story: “Cockburns off on Wedding Trip.”
• John Steinbeck once lost an important manuscript: that of the stories that made up his book The Red Pony. No problem. He sat down and rewrote the book. When he later discovered the original manuscript, he compared it with his rewrite and discovered that except for seven words, the manuscripts were exactly the same.
• Mishaps occur even in the lives of famous authors. Poet Arnold Adoff, author of Eats and Chocolate Dreams, was once eating peanut butter while writing at a typewriter. He was careless, he got peanut butter in the typewriter, and he was forced to hire a repairman to fix the problem.
Money
• When Robert Fisk, investigative journalist for The Independent in Britain, discovered that a biography titled Saddam Hussein: From Birth to Martyrdom was selling well in Egypt, he decided to investigate. Why? Because displayed on the biography’s book cover and title page were the words “by Robert Fisk,” although he had not written the book. He used his Sherlock Holmesian skills to track the forger to a bookstore where the forger had worked, although apparently the forger no longer worked there. Mr. Fisk bought a copy of the biography for 30 Egyptian pounds, then he produced his ID and told the bookstore proprietor that he was Robert Fisk and that he had not written the book. He then asked how many copies of the book the bookstore proprietor — who called himself “Mahmoud” — had sold. Mahmoud replied, “At least 100 so far.” Mr. Fisk then said, “So you owe me 3,000 Egyptian pounds!” Unfortunately, this reply came back: “But, no, Mr. Robert, we don’t owe you this — because you have just told me you didn’t write this book. How can we pay you for a book you did not write?”
• Jane Rule is the author of Desert of the Heart, her pro-lesbian novel an English publishing house released in 1964. In publishing the novel, Ms. Rule did not use a pseudonym — a rarity at the time. In 2005, she was living on Galliano Island, a British Columbia Gulf Island where she ran a small mortgage and loan company in a community where most residents were accustomed to a cash-only economy. She said that she spent her time “often bailing out kids who’re in trouble and finding mortgages for people whom the banks wouldn’t touch. I think a good many of them are growing pot.” Of course, growing pot can be problematic if a pot grower who owes you money gets arrested. Therefore, she jokes, “I said to the cop, ‘Don’t you bust anybody until you check to see whether I have their mortgage or not!’” This job did have an advantage for a writer: “You learn a lot about people when they need money.”
***
Copyright by Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
***
The Funniest People in Books, Volume 3 — Buy
The Funniest People in Books, Volume 3 — Kindle
The Funniest People in Books, Volume 3 — Apple
The Funniest People in Books, Volume 3 — Barnes and Noble
The Funniest People in Books, Volume 3 — Kobo
The Funniest People in Books, Volume 3— Smashwords: Many Formats, Including PDF
Media
• In 1953, 16-year-old high school student Shirlie Blaney got what many, many journalists wanted: an exclusive interview with the reclusive J.D. Salinger, author of Catcher in the Rye. Getting the interview wasn’t that hard. Mr. Salinger was friendly with the students in Windsor, Vermont, and Shirlie simply asked for the interview. However, the editor of the Windsor Eagle, knowing that the high school student had gotten a major coup, decided not to run the interview on the high school page, but instead ran it prominently on the op-ed page. Mr. Salinger’s friendship with the high school students ended.
• An editor for the Washington Post called lesbian humorist Ellen Orleans, who lives in Colorado, to get permission to reprint one of her essays. Ms. Orleans waited until she hung up the telephone to go berserk and scream out the window: “That was the Washington Post. That’s the W-A-S-H-I-N-G-T-O-N — not Denver — Post. They like my writing. They’re even paying me real money for it!”
• When H. Allen Smith was a young newspaper reporter, he worked at the United Press, which had offices in the Daily News building in New York. He and a friend, Henry McLemore, decided to make things interesting for bystanders by taking turns running through the lobby and screaming at the top of their lungs, “Gangway! Scoop! Scoop! Scoop!”
Mishaps
• Monica Dickens is the great-granddaughter of novelist Charles Dickens. (He died in 1870; she was born in 1915.) Because she was bored with the rounds of debutante balls, she decided to go into service — that is, she hired herself out as a cook/maid to people of her own social class. Her 18 months working as a servant resulted in one of her delightful autobiographies, One Pair of Hands, which was published in 1939 and which includes many anecdotes. On one occasion when Monica Dickens was serving drinks at an employer’s party, she heard one gentleman ask another, “What station does one go from for Portsmouth?” Of course, as a servant, Ms. Dickens was supposed to be seen and not heard, but without thinking, she “answered automatically, ‘Waterloo.’ I was horrified, and they were a little startled, but being perfect gentlemen they smiled politely and said ‘Thank you.’”
• As you would expect, Carson McCullers read deeply. When she was a child, she was sent to buy groceries at a time she was engrossed in reading short stories by Katherine Mansfield. She read the stories at the grocery store counter, and she read the stories under the street lamp outside the grocery store. Once she was so engrossed in a work by Dostoevsky that she didn’t notice that her house was on fire. And when she was working a day job as a bookkeeper, she was fired because she read Proust on company time. Carson also formed crushes on other people, including writers. At Yaddo, a writers’ colony, she used to curl up outside the door of Katherine Anne Porter’s cabin, hoping to make Ms. Porter pay attention to her when she finally opened the door. Instead, Ms. Porter pretended that Carson wasn’t there and stepped over her and went wherever she needed to go.
• Some famous writers have notoriously bad handwriting — a major problem for editors attempting to provide scholarly editions of the writers’ letters, journals, and notebooks. Unintentional errors, of course, occur in this attempt. Walter Harding, the founding editor of the Thoreau Edition, believed that Henry David Thoreau, author of Walden, had used the word “Ecology” in an 1850s letter. If so, this would have been the word’s first-ever recorded use, with its second-ever recorded use occurring eight years later. In fact, the Oxford English Dictionary changed its entry on “ecology” to include Mr. Thoreau’s alleged use of the word. Unfortunately, when Mr. Harding reexamined the letter and related documents, he discovered that what he had thought was a capital E was actually a capital G. Mr. Thoreau had not written “Ecology” — he had written “Geology.”
***
Copyright by Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
***
The Funniest People in Books, Volume 3 — Buy
The Funniest People in Books, Volume 3 — Kindle
The Funniest People in Books, Volume 3 — Apple
The Funniest People in Books, Volume 3 — Barnes and Noble
The Funniest People in Books, Volume 3 — Kobo
The Funniest People in Books, Volume 3— Smashwords: Many Formats, Including PDF
BRUCE’S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: “Crash, Crash, And Crash Again”
Album: BEACH, BUTTS, BURGERS AND BEERS — A TRIBUTE TO THE DEAD ROCKS
Artist: Bang Bang Babies
Record Company: Reverb Brasil
Record Company Location: Brazil
Info: Reverb Brasil is a Surf and Garage Brazilian music label.
Covers of Brazilian surf band The Dead Rocks songs by Various Artists.
Price: $1 (USD) for single; $5 (USD) for 28-track album
Genre: Instrumental Surf Music.
Links:
BEACH, BUTTS, BURGERS AND BEERS — A TRIBUTE TO THE DEAD ROCKS
https://reverbbrasil.bandcamp.com/album/beach-butts-burgers-and-beers-a-tribute-to-the-dead-rocks
https://reverbbrasil.bandcamp.com
The Dead Rocks Official Website
Letters
• Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., author of Slaughterhouse-Five, received a letter from an Indiana high-school student who boiled down the message of Mr. Vonnegut’s books to this maxim: “Love may fail, but courtesy will prevail.” Mr. Vonnegut was pleased with the maxim and wrote in the preface of his novel Jailbird, “I am now in the abashed condition … of realizing that I needn’t have bothered to write several books. A seven-word telegram would have done the job. Seriously.”
• Perhaps the most shocking letter that Judy Blume, an often-censored and often-challenged author of books for young people, ever received came from a nine-year-old who criticized her for writing about Jewish angels in Starring Sally J. Friedman as Herself. The letter was addressed to Jewdy Blume.
• The first fan letter that J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books, received came from Francesca Gray. The letter began, “Dear Sir ….” Since then, Francesca and Ms. Rowling have met, and Francesca has realized her mistake.
Libraries
• The ancient city of Alexandria had an excellent and important library composed of papyrus scrolls. Whenever ships entered the harbor, they were searched for books that could be copied and added to the library. King Ptolemy I even gave the city of Athens 15 talents in gold — a HUGE sum of money — as a deposit so he could borrow the city’s collection of plays. The deal was that the gold would be returned after the Alexandrian librarians had copied the manuscripts and safely returned them. However, King Ptolemy I decided to keep the original manuscripts and gave the city of Athens the copies, thus forfeiting the 15 talents in gold.
• Malcolm Glenn Wyer was a librarian who was interested in expanding his library’s holdings in the field of aeronautics. Therefore, in 1940, he asked Maggs Brothers, a London book-dealing firm, to ship a collection of aeronautical books to the Denver [Colorado] Public Library, where they could be inspected, and if found suitable, purchased. Maggs Brothers agreed and sent the requested books. Later, Mr. Wyer received a letter from Maggs Brothers, saying that the day after the books had been sent, the warehouse where they had been stored was destroyed by Nazi bombs.
• As a child, Newbery Medal-winning children’s book author Lois Lowry often visited the library twice in one day, returning the books she had checked out, then read earlier that day. When the librarian told her that she shouldn’t borrow, then return books the same day, young Lois started taking out thicker books.
Media
• In the late 1980s, two Village Voice writers had a disagreement. Nat Hentoff had written something about abortion that upset Allen Barra, and Mr. Barra criticized Mr. Hentoff in a letter to the editor that used the word “fascist” frequently. Mr. Barra was so angry at Mr. Hentoff that he didn’t even ask the jazz enthusiast if he had heard any good jazz albums recently. Not long after, Mr. Barra received a reply from Mr. Hentoff in his Village Voice mail slot. Mr. Hentoff had placed there a very good jazz album by Pee Wee Russell. In addition, he left a note: “Hey, give me a break. You may need it yourself someday. P.S. Listen to this. It might clear your head out.” Mr. Barra, with tongue in cheek (and in check), wrote a couple of decades later about Mr. Hentoff, only without the use of the asterisk, “What an *sshole. Instead of jumping into the argument with pettiness and personal acrimony, he sought to create a dialogue with reason, tolerance, and jazz. What can you do with a guy like that?” Mr. Hentoff, of course, is not afraid to express his opinions, even when many or most people disagree with them. And he does not feel obligated to toe a knee-jerk liberal line. In fact, he once told a Village Voice editor, “When I want your opinion, I’ll ask Tom Hayden for it.”
***
Copyright by Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
***
The Funniest People in Books, Volume 3 — Buy
The Funniest People in Books, Volume 3 — Kindle
The Funniest People in Books, Volume 3 — Apple
The Funniest People in Books, Volume 3 — Barnes and Noble
The Funniest People in Books, Volume 3 — Kobo
The Funniest People in Books, Volume 3— Smashwords: Many Formats, Including PDF
BRUCE’S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: “Satisfaction Guaranteed”
Two-Track Single: “Satisfaction Guaranteed” bound with “Go Your Way”
Artist: Jake Starr and the Delicious Fullness
Artist Location: Washington, D.C.
Info: “After fronting Washington DC garage rockers Adam West for nearly 17 years, soft-spoken, mild-mannered Jake Starr took time off to recharge his batteries. Now he’s back to deliver high-octane, garage rock-n-roll with Sean Crowley on guitar and backing vox, Louie Newmyer on bass, and Nathaniel Osgood on drums. Think Small Faces, Chocolate Watchband, Easybeats, and Music Machine. “
Price: $1 (USD) for single; $2 (USD) for two-track single
Genre: Rock.
Links:
Jake Starr and the Delicious Fullness on Bandcamp
https://jakestarrandthedeliciousfullness.bandcamp.com
https://jakestarrandthedeliciousfullness.bandcamp.com/album/satisfaction-guaranteed-7
If magnets really have the power to heal, then the refrigerator at my mom’s house is going to run for-ever.
I’m thinking about the things we used to do that rhymed,
like riding a bus,
tightening a truss,
waving at Russ,
yes, I’m thinking about the things we used to do that rhymed
Slap-dash — t r e f o l o g y
The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts. ~Marcus Aurelius
Quote of the Week — HappymessHappiness
Thank you, for your Attitude of Gratitude: Many wish the year 2020 would never have happened.
They are looking at that which they feel was bad as something that took so much good away.
Perhaps 2020 has provided us with opportunities to see that which is truly important to our well being and happiness.
Affirmation: […]
Attitude of Gratitude November 18 2020 — Annette Rochelle Aben
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