How to improve writing (no. 26)

I always enjoy reading Nancy Franklin’s New Yorker pieces about television. But this sentence, from a smart and funny review of Jersey Shore, needs work:

Promos showing a group of young men and women of Italian heritage making entertainingly ridiculous statements about themselves and whooping it up on the boardwalk at night — dancing, throwing punches, that kind of thing — advertised “Jersey Shore” as set in a “house like you’ve never seen, full of the hottest, tannest, craziest Guidos,” and Italian-American groups, and eventually New Jersey tourism officials, protested and some of them called for MTV to cancel the series.

One problem: the number of participles separating subject and verb: Promos [showing, making, whooping, dancing, throwing] advertised. A second problem: the number of ands as the sentence ends: “and Italian-American groups,” “and eventually New Jersey tourism officials,” “and some of them.” A third problem: the missing comma before the and that begins the sentence’s final clause. One more: “some of them” seems ambigious: some of the officials who eventually protested? Or some of the groups and officials?

Things look much better when the matter of this sentence is divided among several sentences:

MTV advertised “Jersey Shore” as set in a “house like you’ve never seen, full of the hottest, tannest, craziest Guidos.” Promos showed a group of young men and women of Italian heritage making entertainingly ridiculous statements about themselves and whooping it up on the boardwalk at night — dancing, throwing punches, that kind of thing. Italian-American groups and New Jersey tourism officials protested, some of them calling for MTV to cancel the series.

The ambiguity of some remains. I’ve let the word apply to both the groups and the officials. And if you’re wondering: I’ve seen enough of Jersey Shore to have seen enough of Jersey Shore.

[This post is no. 26 in a series, “How to improve writing,” dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

Related reading
All How to improve writing posts (via Pinboard)

Seven hours, thirty-eight minutes a day

In the news:

The average young American now spends practically every waking minute — except for the time in school — using a smart phone, computer, television or other electronic device, according to a new study from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Seven hours and thirty-eight minutes a day, survey says. Read more:

If Your Kids Are Awake, They’re Probably Online (New York Times)
Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds (Kaiser Family Foundation)

White Heat and High Sierra

Arthur “Cody” Jarrett (James Cagney) has a question:

“Supposin’, supposin’ you wanted to push in a place like Fort Knox and, ah, grab yourself a couple of tons of gold. What’s the toughest thing about a job like that?”

“Gettin’ inside the joint,” one crony suggests.

“A silver dollar for the gentleman in the balcony. Right on the button, gettin’ in. Which brings me to a story Ma used to tell me when I was a kid, a story about a horse. Way back, there was a whole army tryin’ to knock over a place called Troy, and gettin’ nowhere fast. Couldn’t even put a dent in the walls. And one morning, one morning the people of Troy wake up, look over the walls, and the attacking army disappeared. Men, boats, the works. Takin’ a powder. But they left one thing after them — a great big wooden horse. And according to Ma —”

And there the scene ends. Ma Jarrett (Margaret Wycherly) is Cody’s ultimate authority, his ultimate consolation, his muse. “And according to Ma”: the fall of Troy is her story.

This bit of dialogue is from White Heat (dir. Raoul Walsh, 1949), the best Cagney film I’ve seen. White Heat makes fascinating the sheer drudgery of crime: planning routes, designating drivers, packing, unpacking, checking the time. It’s a film with something for everyone: a great train robbery, a morgue scene, snappy police work (teletype machines, car phones, radio transmitters, wall maps), spooky facial bandages, a car chase, vast prison interiors, an explosive ending. Best of all are the film’s breathtakingly twisted relationships. Only ten minutes into the film, Jarrett seeks his mother’s lap to be comforted. His relationship with his snoring, spitting wife Verna (Virginia Mayo) is a mess of physical and emotional tyranny: there is room for only one true romance in his life. His moments of sudden violence, toward Verna and others, take us into the realm of pathology.

White Heat pairs well with other Cagney films: The Public Enemy (dir. William A. Wellman, 1931) and Angels with Dirty Faces (dir. Michael Curtiz, 1938) are the obvious choices. To my mind though, the ideal partner for White Heat is not a Cagney film but Walsh’s High Sierra (1941). If White Heat gives us the gangster as psychotic killer, Humphrey Bogart’s portrayal of bank-robber Roy Earle gives us the gangster as damaged saint. Earle heals the lame (or at least covers the bill) and inspires devoted followers, one of whom unwittingly betrays him, one of whom weeps for him. The two films together are a fine introduction to the fascinating and repellent figure of the criminal in American screen culture.

Appetizing

Appetizing: adjective, or noun? Discuss.

Sunny intervals

That’s BBC weather.

American weatherpersons often speak of “intervals of sun.” “Sunny intervals” sounds brighter and more cheerful. I’d like sunny intervals, soon.

MLK

[Photograph by Paul Schutzerby, May 17, 1957, Washington, D.C. From the Life photo archive.]

On 17 May 1957, nearly 25,000 demonstrators gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., for a Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom, featuring three hours of spirituals, songs, and speeches that urged the federal government to fulfill the three-year-old Brown v. Board of Education decision. The last speech of the day was reserved for Martin Luther King’s “Give Us the Ballot” oration, which captured public attention and placed him in the national spotlight as a major leader of the civil rights movement.

Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom (King Institute)

Blogger spacing problem solved

If you dislike Blogger’s odd spacing before and after block quotations, here’s a fix.

Look in your Blogger template for “.post {”:

.post {
  margin:.5em 0 1.5em;
  border-bottom:1px dotted $bordercolor;
  padding-bottom:1.5em;
  line-height:1.6em;
  }

Note the line-height. Now look for “.post blockquote {”:

.post blockquote {
  margin:1.6em 20px;
  }

Change the em number to match the line-height you found above, as I’ve done here. That’s it.

[Usual disclaimers apply: tinker at your own risk.]

In Julia Child’s kitchen

Watching The French Chef on DVD last night, Elaine and I had the same thought: that Julia Child’s kitchen is in our kitchen. Look:

My Kitchen, Julia Child’s Kitchen (Musical Assumptions)

See? The oven is not exactly our old one though (pace Elaine). Look here.

Churchill’s speeches fail exam

News from England, late 2009:

Churchill’s speeches, Hemingway’s style and Golding’s prose would not have been appreciated by a new computerised marking system used to assess A level English.

The system, which is a proposed way of marking exam papers online, found that Churchill’s rousing call to "fight them on the beaches" was too repetitive, with the text using the word “upon” and “our” too frequently. . . .

Online marking of papers is being tested by exam boards and could be introduced within the next few years. It is already in use in America, where some children have learnt to write in a style which the computer appreciates, known as “schmoozing the computer.”

Churchill’s speeches fail exam (Telegraph)

Schmoozing the teacher, sure, but I’ve not heard of schmoozing the computer. A Google search points again and again to this Telegraph article. I’d like to know what’s involved in computer-schmoozing.

Related posts, on the SAT essay test
The SAT is broken
Words, words, words

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From a commercial for the United States, in a dream earlier this morning.