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Regular B&Y readers know I love discovering unknown (to me, at least) bits of slang in old movies. Here's the latest.
I was watching A Letter for Evie (1946), a charming little "B" picture from MGM, and there was a scene wherein one soldier, a handsome hunk of man played by John Carroll, says to his new pal (Hume Cronyn), who is something of a bookish shrimp, "Let's go out and pick up a couple of tomatoes."
"Tomatoes?" asks the nerd.
"Yeah," replies the wolf. "Lollipops. Mice."
Now, "tomatoes" I knew; "lollipops" I'd heard once or twice, but "mice"? That was a new one on me.
It was apparently new to Cronyn's character, too; he puzzled over it, repeating it aloud a couple of times: "Mice??"
So I wondered if maybe it wasn't coined especially for the movie.
Nope, says Jesse Sheidlower, North American editor of the Oxford English Dictionary. The use of "mouse" to refer to a young woman, he tells me, "was very common in the 1940s. There's a unique example from the late eighteenth century, but after that it doesn't turn up again until the late 1910s." (To his credit, Jesse also pegged, without me telling him, which movie I'd heard the term used in -- he's a whiz, I tell you.)
I'm not sure it's a usage that could be considered ripe for revival, but what the heck, it's worth a try. I urge you to use it in a sentence sometime in the next week, even if whomever you're speaking to is likely to be as confused by it as Hume Cronyn was.
Paula Span has written an eye-opening account for The Washington Post of the many military families who are now going public with their opposition to the war. It's recommended reading.
However, the story, as have virtually every other of the hundreds of stories written since the U.S. and its Coalition of the Willing, neglects to include the many thousands of innocent Iraqis who have been killed or wounded in the past year as a result of the conflict.
I sent the following letter to Ms. Span:
Ms. Span,I found compelling and moving your story in The Washington Post about military families who are now coming out in opposition to the war in Iraq. But your otherwise well-written story contained the same misinformation (if I may be allowed to term it so) found in most of the hundreds of other Iraq-related stories published since the invasion was launched: It included only American casualties in the cited numbers of dead and wounded.
Given that even the most hawkish members of the Bush administration would agree that it was Saddam Hussein and his supporters, not the Iraqi people, who were -- and are -- our enemies in this war, the many thousands of innocent Iraqis who have been maimed or killed since we invaded certainly deserve to be counted, to be remembered, to be mourned.
I urge you, Ms. Span, to consider remembering these victims, too, in future stories about the war in Iraq. We should surely mourn and honor every drop of American blood shed in Iraq, but we should also endeavor to remember the many thousands of innocent Iraqis who have suffered or died as a result of our actions.
Thank for your time and consideration in reading this note.
Sincerely,
Brett Leveridge
New York, NY
I don't in any way mean to single Ms. Span out; she's hardly alone in focusing solely on US casualties. But I'm resolved to endeavor to contact journalists when I'm able to urge them to reconsider the nature of their casualty counts. The Bush administration insists that the Iraqi people are not our enemies; given that, it surely behooves us to remember those among them who have suffered and even died since March 20th of last year.
If you agree, I urge you to contact Ms. Span and other journalists with your thoughts on the matter.
Here's an update: Ms. Span responded with a gracious note acknowledging that the issue is a legitimate one -- one that arose during the Vietnam War, too, she says.
Perhaps, if enough people get involved in raising this issue, we can help effect a change in how the media reports casualties during armed conflicts. I'll have more thoughts on this later.
Let's face it -- most radio stinks. It's flavorless, indistinct, and safe (read: boring). The airwaves are publicly owned, and anyone afforded the opportunity to use them for profit should be required to serve the public interest by providing interesting and challenging programming, but those days are, for the most part, long gone.
All of which is just one more reason to love the internet. I'm the first to admit there's much to hate about the net, too, but today I'm feeling warm and fuzzy toward it.
Thanks to the internet, one can seek out those few outposts of quality radio, even when their broadcast signal falls a couple of thousand miles short of reaching you.
There are any number of online musical outlets I enjoy, but today I recommend to you a terrific public station that operates out of Seattle, Washington: KEXP-FM.
The station features just an amazing array of great music, with an emphasis on indie rock. There are specialty programs on the KEXP schedule devoted to the blues, rockabilly, African music, reggae, ambient music, and much more, but it's the daily musical melange as heard weekday mornings and afternoons that I especially recommend to you.
Here are the top 25 listings on their current playchart:
1. Snow Patrol - Final Straw
2. Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand
3. Modest Mouse - Float On/I've Got It All (Most)
4. The Cooper Temple Clause - Kick Up the Fire, and Let the Flames Break Loose
5. Grant-Lee Phillips - Virginia Creeper
6. The Walkmen - Bows + Arrows
7. Zero 7 - When it Falls
8. Cloud Cult - Aurora Borealis
9. Air - Talkie Walkie
10. Camera Obscura - Underachievers Please Try Harder
11. Skywave - Synthstatic
12. Life at Sea - Is There a Signal Coming Through?
13. Stereolab - Margerine Eclipse
14. Aqualung - Still Life
15. Telefon Tel Aviv - Map of What is Effortless
16. Norah Jones - Feels Like Home
17. Blonde Redhead - Misery Is a Butterfly
18. Unkle - Never, Never Land
19. TV On The Radio - Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes
20. Seachange - Glitterball ep
21. Jem - Finally Woken
22. The Get Up Kids - Guilt Show
23. Preston School of Industry - Monsoon
24. Federico Aubele - Gran Hotel Buenos Aires
25. The Elected - Me First
There's some great stuff in that mix. Not only did I first hear many of these bands on KEXP, I might never have heard them at all if it weren't for kexp.org. If you don't know many of these artists, you owe it to yourself to give KEXP's audio stream a listen. It might soon be your favorite station, even if you can't pick it up with your clock radio.
(Of the above artists, I especially recommend TV on the Radio to you. I first heard them on KEXP, and I'm loving both their 2003 EP and their recent full-length record. In fact, that's the only downside of being a regular KEXP listener: Purchasing all the great music they turn you on to can take a big bite out of your budget.)
I was sorry to hear this:
Hollywood screen beauty Frances Dee dies
Associated Press
LOS ANGELES -- Frances Dee, the stunning actress who co-starred in the 1930s and 1940s with Maurice Chevalier, Gary Cooper, Ronald Colman and her husband, Joel McCrea, has died.Dee died Saturday at Norwalk Hospital in Norwalk, Conn., where her son, Peter McCrea, lived, said family friend Andrew Wentink, who is writing a biography about Dee. The actress had been at the hospital since having a stroke three weeks ago.
Her family listed Dee's age as 94, though other sources put her age at 96....
I sat right in front of Ms. Dee a couple of years ago at Film Forum here in NYC. She was terribly frail, physically, but mentally very sharp in speaking to the crowd after the movie.
Film Forum was screening a pre-code film that night in which Dee played a small role, and afterward she quipped that, while watching the film, she was on the edge of her seat because she had no earthly idea what was in store for her character. She had no memory whatsoever of making the movie (due not to her advanced age, but to the fact that the filming had occurred so long ago, and they'd cranked out movies at such a pace in those days).
She was quite funny that night and very charming. May she rest in peace.
It may well be true in every field of endeavor, but it's especially so for scribes, I think, that we are alternately inspired and discouraged by the work of other writers.
David Rakoff, a funny, whipsmart essayist whose talents I admire (and, I'll admit it, envy) greatly, once admitted to me that he experiences this phenomenon, too, so I know I'm not alone. "It's the difference," he said, "between seeing Gene Kelly dance, who makes you think you could do it, and seeing Rudolf Nureyev, who makes you realize you couldn't."
It's an apt analogy. The truth is, both those dancers were doing things well beyond the abilities of us mere mortals, but somehow Kelly fooled us into thinking we could match him move for move, if only we'd get up off our duffs.
The writers who play the Nureyev/Kelly roles in my own creative struggle are, respectively, Michael Chabon, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay, Wonder Boys, and The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, among others, and Nick Hornby, whose books include High Fidelity, About a Boy, and How to Be Good. They're both compelling, extremely talented writers whose work I thoroughly enjoy, but somehow, when I read Hornby, my inner monologue goes something like, "Wow, this is charming and funny. This is right up my alley. I could achieve something like this."
When I read Chabon, those inner voices grow a bit more tremulous. "Who are you kidding? How dare you call yourself a writer? This guy's a real writer; you're not in his league." (Mind you, those perhaps half dozen people out there who have read both my work and Hornby's might be moved to remind me that I'm not in his league, either, and I would heartily agree.)
You can see, then, why I'm grateful that Chabon's not more prolific; if I were to read his stuff more often, I'd never get a thing written, whereas, if Horby could see his way clear to cranking it out a bit faster, I might've already completed the novel on which I'm currently laboring.
Last night brought an opportunity to confront my demons. The Paris Review held an event to salute the 2003 Paris Review prizewinners, and each of the honorees -- Yiyun Lee, Julie Sheehan, and (gulp!) Michael Chabon -- was on hand to read from his or her prizewinning work.
It was the kind of soiree that serves to remind me of why I came to (and why I remain in) New York. A large room packed with intelligent, articulate, talented people who care about writing (and, of course, reading). I've little doubt I was the dumbest guy in the room.
Upon arriving, I spotted Chabon in the corner of the crowded room, chatting with an admirer. I'd somehow decided that it was a good idea to present him, if given the opportunity, with a copy of my own book. I'm not entirely sure whence sprang this idea. but I was resolved to carry it through.
So I wandered over and waited my turn to speak to Chabon. I was surprised at how nervous I suddenly felt -- I've met, chatted with, interviewed, and otherwise interacted with any number of famous people over the years and not reacted this way, so my skittishness caught me off guard. I can't imagine our brief encounter was anything less than uncomfortable for Chabon, but he was very gracious, noting who had published my book and asking who'd served as my editor. The fact that, in my jittery state, it took me fifteen or twenty seconds to recall her name (I'm sorry, Lee!) must have struck him as a bit odd -- it certainly struck me that way -- but he was patient in waiting for my synapses to begin firing.
With our brief encounter over and my humble little hardback in Chabon's possession, I scurried away, mortified that I'd not handled myself with more aplomb.
I assuaged my embarrassment with some of the free 12-year-old Scotch provided by one of the event's co-sponsors and tried to be satisfied that I'd at least said hello and passed on the book. I found a seat -- no small miracle in that packed house -- and chattered on mercilessly to the poor soul who'd found herself seated beside me until finally -- mercifully, for her sake -- the reading began.
John Guare, the acclaimed playwright whose works include House of Blue Leaves and Six Degrees of Separation, was elegant, erudite, and utterly charming in filling in for recently deceased George Plimpton. Guare paid tribute to Plimpton by reading a bit of his prose recounting the early days of TPR before he introduced Li, winner of the 2003 Plimpton Prize (awarded to the best work of fiction or poetry published in The Paris Review by an emerging or previously unpublished writer). After Li read from her prizewinning story, "Immortality," Sheehan, winner of the 2003 Bernard F. Conners Prize for Poetry (awarded to the finest poem over 200 lines published in The Paris Review) read from her prizewinning poem, "The Brown-headed Cowbirds."
Last on the bill was Chabon, and, judging by the crowd's response, he was clearly the man most in attendance were there to see. He apologized in advance for the accents (German and British) he would use in reading from his prizewinning story, "The Final Solution," but he needn't have done so. He reads very well, bringing his wonderful (if, to me, intimidating) prose to life very effectively (yes, the accents left something to be desired, but I certainly could have done no better).
The ovation he received at reading's end was even louder than the one that greeted him, and it appeared, as they filed out, that the crowd was very pleased indeed. I'd convinced myself during the reading that I'd not made such a fool of myself during our earlier encounter that I couldn't ask Chabon to sign the copy of Kavalier and Klay that I, er, just happened to have with me, and to his credit, he seemed perfectly happy to oblige. But there were enough attendees waiting to speak with him that I didn't get the chance to ask him what I truly wanted to know: By whose talents, if any, is Michael Chabon cowed? By which writer, in the event of a face-to-face encounter, would he be rendered him timorous and twittery?
That question will have to remain unanswered for the nonce, but I will seek comfort in assuring myself that such a writer must exist. Surely, even Michael Chabon has his own literary Nureyev.
Before you consider buying into the hype from the Bush camp that John Kerry is a flip-flopper on the issues (and, really, over the course of more than twenty years in public office, shouldn't he have changed his mind a few times? I don't trust anyone who is that resolute in believing he's got it all figured out), check out The Daily Kos for a list of Bush's own reversals.
Last night's Sopranos debut was a bit underwhelming, but the season openers tend to be so. They must set the stage, after all, for what's to come and catch viewers up with where things stand, with what's occurred since last we saw these characters.
I'm looking forward to the arrival of Steve Buscemi (an actor I've been told I resemble -- and I'll admit to mixed feelings about that). He ought to shake things up effectively.
Last night's Curb Your Enthusiasm was a season highlight for me, and it leaves me optimistic about next week's hour-long season finale. I find I enjoy CYE most when Larry is not so misanthropic, when he's a bit more likable -- when, in short, the show has more of a Seinfeld-esque quality to it.
It's remarkable how much of my television viewing is tied up with HBO's Sunday night programming. The only network series I still watch are NYPD Blue, 24, Friends, and King of the Hill, and at least one of those will disappear before next season (and NYPD Blue is overdue for a plug-pulling).