The real Mr. T

How exciting (to me, anyway) to discover that a pencil manufacturer employed a cartoon spokescharacter. Meet Mr. T, who represented Dixon Ticonderoga pencils.

I found this image (from a 1957 magazine ad) in Warren Dotz and Masud Husain's Meet Mr. Product (San Francisco: Chronicle, 2003).

To corpse

"The difference on this program is that everybody corpses, and there's no one worse than Ricky."

Shaun Williamson (aka "Barry from EastEnders"), commenting on the BBC series Extras

Watching the extras on an Extras DVD (second season), I learned a bit of acting slang. The Oxford English Dictionary traces its history:

corpse, v. Actors' slang. To confuse or 'put out' (an actor) in the performance of his part; to spoil (a scene or piece of acting) by some blunder.

1873 Slang Dict., Corpse, to stick fast in the dialogue; to confuse or put out the actors by making a mistake.

In 1993, the OED expanded the definition:

[2.] b. intr. Of an actor: to forget one's lines; = DRY v. 2 d; to spoil one's performance by being confused or made to laugh by one's colleagues.

1874 HOTTEN Slang Dict., Corpse, to stick fast in the dialogue. 1958 News Chron. 23 May 4/7 There's a new word, too, from drama school. When anyone forgot their lines in the past they had dried. Today, they have 'corpsed'. 1972 A. BENNETT Getting On I. 32 Mrs Brodribb: When Max —. Geoff: Max (He corpses). Mrs Brodribb: (silencing him with a look) — pauses by your doorstep he is not just relieving himself. He is leaving a message. 1987 Observer 8 Feb. 11/2 Gambon said his dying line ('Oh, I am slain') in the mode of a different theatrical grandee every night — a display of 'suicidal nerve', all to get his co-actor to corpse in the dark.

It's the most recent meaning of the word that's relevant to Extras, though here it's the corpsing performer him- or herself who takes the blame for failing to keep a straight face. The short feature The Art of Corpsing features Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant and company corpsing — in take after take after take — and talking about corpsing. One realizes, watching these efforts, how much dedicated work goes into what appears to be the most casual, low-key kind of comedic acting.

A Proust tour

Odette has alerted her readers to a Proust tour to Paris, Illiers-Combray and Cabourg (the novel's Balbec). It's too late for this year's trip, which took place in June. Interested parties might begin saving for next summer ($3,675).

Had I but cash enough and time, I'd like to make such a trip. I'd especially like seeing Proust's notebooks at the Bibliothèque nationale. I'm not sure though that I believe in the likelihood of the "magic moments" that the tourgivers promise:

Reading the madeleine excerpt from Swann's Way while you sip tea and take a bite of your madeleine in Illiers-Combray. Standing in the lobby of the Grand Hotel in Cabourg (Balbec) with a view of the beach. Unforgettable experiences that bring Proust's prose to life.

Well, maybe. What brings Proust's prose to life for me is recognizing the Proustian workings of memory and perception in my own life. Eating a madeleine would bring me no closer to Proust than eating red beans and rice would to Louis Armstrong.¹ But drinking a glass of water and being reminded of my grandparents' kitchen — that, for me, is a genuinely Proustian moment.

There's a wonderful anecdote about Joseph Cornell that helps me to understand my uneasiness about this promise of "magic moments." David Saunders, a high-school student and fan of Cornell's work, once brought the artist a box of items from childhood:

There were glass shards, chandelier crystals, a sheriff's badge, old coins, wind-up metal toys from early in the century. Knowing how much Cornell loved such objects, Saunders plunked down the box on the kitchen table, removed its contents, and generously said, "You can have everything!" Cornell appeared astounded. "Oh no, Mr. Saunders," he protested, "I couldn't take these. This is your marvelous collection."

[Deborah Solomon, Utopia Parkway: The Life and Work of Joseph Cornell (NY: Noonday, 1997) 356-57]

So too it's Proust's marvelous madeleine, the trigger for his involuntary memories. Yours, or mine, might be found closer to home.

¹ Red beans and rice was a signature Armstrong dish. He often signed letters "Red beans and ricely yours."

Proust in Paris, Illiers-Combray and Cabourg (Balbec) (Travel-by-the-Book)

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Joseph Cornell on collecting
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American highway signage

American highway signage is changing:

Highway Gothic conjures the awe of Interstate travel and the promise of midcentury futurism; Clearview's aesthetic is decidedly more subdued. "It's like being a good umpire," [highway engineer Martin] Pietrucha says, suggesting that one of Clearview's largest triumphs will be how quietly it replaces Highway Gothic sign by sign in the coming years. "It will completely change the look of the American highway, but not so much that anyone will notice."

Driving east in Pennsylvania last week, I noticed the Trebuchet-like curl in the lower-case l (i.e., el), but I didn't realize that the change was more than local.

Read all about it:

The Road to Clarity (New York Times)

Vegan Restaurants Master List

Erin at Vegan Restaurants Master List is contacting the corporate headquarters of restaurant chains to ask "What's vegan?"

Erin's blog is a great resource for anyone who's vegan (or aspires to be). But it's good reading too for anyone with an interest in seeing how corporations respond to friendly questions from customers and potential customers. The responses range from helpful and well-informed (Chili's) to highly evasive (Jimmy John's).

It's remarkable how little the people who run restaurants sometimes know about what they're serving. A few days ago, when I asked the manager of a Taco Bell if the rice was vegan, she laughed and said she had "no idea."

A related post
Is Jimmy John's bread vegan?

Lemonade and lies

In a Dashiell Hammett story, the Continental Op looks at a sign in a bar — "ONLY GENUINE PRE-WAR AMERICAN AND BRITISH WHISKEYS SERVED HERE" — and begins to count the lies. I thought of that moment when examining a bottle in the supermarket today. The beverage inside is distributed by Supervalu Inc. The label reads:

ORIGINAL
LEMONADE
FLAVORED BEVERAGE WITH OTHER NATURAL FLAVORS
Old Fashioned Recipe

The old-fashioned recipe?

INGREDIENTS: FILTERED WATER,
CITRIC ACID, POTASSIUM CITRATE,
SODIUM HEXAMETAPHOSPHATE,
ASPARTAME, POTASSIUM SORBATE
AND POTASSIUM BENZOATE
(PRESERVATIVES), GUM ACACIA,
SUCROSE ACETATE ISOBUTYRATE,
NATURAL FLAVOR, ACESULFAME
POTASSIUM, CALCIUM DISODIUM EDTA
(TO PROTECT FLAVOR), YELLOW 5.

How many lies do you count?

Update: A response from the manufacturer:

Question Garners Local Man Coupons

Homer then and now

The Nation has an extensive report on the experiences of American veterans of the war in Iraq. An excerpt:

We heard a few reports, in one case corroborated by photographs, that some soldiers had so lost their moral compass that they'd mocked or desecrated Iraqi corpses. One photo, among dozens turned over to The Nation during the investigation, shows an American soldier acting as if he is about to eat the spilled brains of a dead Iraqi man with his brown plastic Army-issue spoon. . . .

The scene, Sergeant [Camilo] Mejía said, was witnessed by the dead man's brothers and cousins.

A reader of Homer's Iliad will find nothing surprising in such accounts. Achilles' character is undone in the course of the Iliad; the warrior who once displayed the greatest concern for his comrades and the greatest compassion toward the enemy descends into self-absorbed brutality. Here is Achilles speaking to the Trojan warrior Hector, before killing him and dragging his body behind a chariot:

               "I wish my stomach would let me
Cut off your flesh in strips and eat it raw
For what you've done to me. There is no one
And no way to keep the dogs off your head."

(Iliad 22, translated by Stanley Lombardo)

Standing on Troy's wall, Hector's father and mother witness Achilles' treatment of their son's body, groaning and screaming as they watch.

And here we are, twenty-seven centuries later, in the same story.

The Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness (The Nation, via Boing Boing)

Fermi

Another quality adding-a-URL-to-Google experience:

Enrico Fermi (Nobelprize.org)

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A noisy little "privilege"

One more thing I learned on my summer vacation: in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, a historical marker at the birthplace of Laura Ingersoll Secord notes that her father Thomas Ingersoll had privilege on the nearby Housatonic River. Meaning? The Oxford English Dictionary explains:

A (section of) river capable of powering machinery, as for a mill, factory, etc.; = water-privilege.

This watery meaning is American in origin and now considered obsolete.

The OED gives three sample sentences. This one's my favorite, from C.M. Kirkland's Western Clearings (1845):

He paced the bank of the noisy little ‘privilege’ that turned the gristmill.

Tenuously related post
Things I learned on my summer vacation (2007)

Things I learned on my summer vacation (2007)

Solvent cups are great for packing vitamins, meds, and other small items.

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Ashland, Ohio, claims to be "the world headquarters of nice people."

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Jesse's Café (139 Brighton Ave, Long Branch, New Jersey) is a wonderful mostly-vegan restaurant. The baba ghanoush is spectacular.

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Ratatouille is a noun made from two verbs: ratouiller (to disturb, shake) and tatouiller (to stir).

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Manhattan Special is an espresso soda from Brooklyn, New York, bottled since 1895. It is everything Coke Black wants (and fails) to be.

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Older wine — a 1989 Bordeaux, almost brown in color, earthy in taste — is very different from the 2005, 2006 stuff I buy.

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Fuller's earth is a special-effects material used in simulating explosions. When you see the dirt flying up in a big plume, that's Fuller's earth.

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Desert Spring is a house-brand imitation of Poland Spring.

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"Oprah and her friends are just a call away." (Slogan on a cell-service kiosk in a New Jersey mall.)

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Rob Zseleczky can play a note-perfect guitar part for "Scarborough Fair."

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My sister-in-law Susie can draw manga characters.

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Most events in one's life happened "fifteen or twenty years ago."

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KARL BUSH EATS HOAGIES. (Painted on an overpass in Pennsylvania.)

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Singing along with Pete Seeger while driving lightens and brightens all moods.

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Coming back is so much nicer when the house is decluttered.

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Things I learned on my summer vacation (2006)