Happy New Year

[Marty (Ernest Borgnine) and Clara (Betsy Blair) sit side by side in the dining room. Marty has tried to kiss Clara; she's said no.]

Marty: Well, I'm old enough to know better. Comes New Year's Eve, everybody starts arranging parties. I'm the guy they gotta dig up a date for. I'll just get a pack of cigarettes and take --

Clara: I'd like to see you again. Very much. The reason I didn't let you kiss me was because I just didn't know how to -- handle the situation. You're the kindest man I ever met. The reason I tell you this is because I want to see you again, very much. I know that when you take me home I'm just going to lie on my bed and think about you. I want very much to see you again.

Marty: What are you doing tomorrow night?

Clara: Nothing.

Marty: I'll call you up tomorrow. Maybe we'll go see a movie.

Clara: I'd like that, very much.

Marty: The reason I can't be more definite now is because my Aunt Catherine is probably coming over tomorrow. I may have to help out.

Clara: I'll wait for your call.

Marty: I better take you home now. [They stand.] It's getting late and the busses only run about one an hour.

Clara: All right.

Marty: I'll just get a pack of cigarettes. [Marty walks to the dresser, gets the cigarettes, comes back. He and Clara now stand face to face.]

Marty: What are you doing New Year's Eve?

Clara: Nothing.

[They kiss.]

From Marty (1955), directed by Delbert Mann, screenplay by Paddy Chayefsky

What am I doing New Year's Eve? Transcribing this dialogue, before sharing a bottle of wine with my wife.

Happy New Year.

"Serious pencils indeed"

I have a piece of writing (with photographs) at Pencil Revolution, a wonderful site. "Serious pencils indeed" is the story of some A.W. Faber Castell 9000 pencils that I found in an office-supply store, some 45 years or so after their manufacture.

It's appropriate that this piece has appeared before 2005 is over -- as Pencil Revolution points out, 2005 marks the 100th anniversary of the Castell 9000.

My son: "Points out. Ha ha. Please write no pun intended."

Me: "Okay."

No pun intended.

Link "Serious pencils indeed"

Taste in apes

Overheard:

"Personally, I'm more willing to believe the puppet-apes than the computer-generated apes."

Food for thought

My local newspaper has changed its format to focus on infotainment -- a neverending series of articles on dieting, shopping, budgeting, and so on. But what about the second ad below, from today's paper? Is its presence in the "Foods" category better explained by carelessness, or by a journalist's desire to bring value-added amusement to every corner of the paper? (And while I'm asking questions: who shops for "foods" in the classifieds anyway?)



My friend Joanna Key spotted this ad. Thanks, Joanna, for sharing.

Hark

Seen on the television screen this evening, on a PBS station, no less:

Hark The Harold Angels Sing

The Christmas truce

Well, we were in those trenches I don't know how long. Then it came, Christmas morning. So we stuck a board up -- "Merry Christmas." They also stuck one up -- "Merry Christmas." So we were saying, Well, I don't think they'll fire today. No, I don't think they will.

Then lo and behold, it was a German coming down out of the trench, run right into the River Lys, he did. And here was a German coming down the riverbank with his hands up above. One of our chaps threw his equipment off. He went out to meet him.

Well, he shook hands. Then we all got out.

In a 1954 interview, Frank Richards of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers remembers the Christmas truce of 1914.

Link: Frank Richards interview (from the BBC archives, requires the RealPlayer)

Link: The Christmas truce (from the BBC)

Men and women?

I'm still waiting for the New York Times to acknowledge an error in a review of Bob Spitz's The Beatles (see here for the details). Checking the Corrections page today, I noticed this oddity:

Because of an editing error, a television review yesterday about "Isaac: Have a Better Day," a new talk show on the Style network starring Isaac Mizrahi, referred incorrectly to the studio audience, which he addresses as "girls." It is an audience of men and women, not college students.

College students aren't men and women?

I'm sending an e-mail to the Times about this one too.

Kid joke, overheard

Child: It smells like updog in here.

Parent: What's updog?

The gone dead train

I wanna go home and that train is done gone dead
I wanna go, that train is done gone dead

King Solomon Hill, "The Gone Dead Train" (1932)

The bus too.

I remember the New York transit strike of 1980, which kept me from even thinking of getting up to Columbia University to hear Jorge Luis Borges read.

Here's a wish that this strike is settled -- and soon. Good luck, fellow New Yorkers.

Literacy falling

Further confirmation that there's a difference between a degree and an education:

The average American college graduate's literacy in English declined significantly over the past decade, according to results of a nationwide test released yesterday.

The National Assessment of Adult Literacy, given in 2003 by the Department of Education, is the nation's most important test of how well adult Americans can read. . . .

When the test was last administered, in 1992, 40 percent of the nation's college graduates scored at the proficient level, meaning that they were able to read lengthy, complex English texts and draw complicated inferences. But on the 2003 test, only 31 percent of the graduates demonstrated those high-level skills. There were 26.4 million college graduates.

The college graduates who in 2003 failed to demonstrate proficiency included 53 percent who scored at the intermediate level and 14 percent who scored at the basic level, meaning they could read and understand short, commonplace prose texts.

Three percent of college graduates who took the test in 2003, representing some 800,000 Americans, demonstrated "below basic" literacy, meaning that they could not perform more than the simplest skills, like locating easily identifiable information in short prose.

Link: "Literacy Falls for Graduates From College, Testing Finds" (from the New York Times)