Fresca made a suggestion in a comment: write a sentence using Merriam-Webster’s nine runners-up for Word of the Year. The runners-up: complicit, recuse, empathy, dotard, syzygy, gyro, federalism, hurricane, and gaffe.
Mine:
“In the name of federalism, show some empathy, or at least some syzygy, you complicit gaffe-prone dotard,” the hurricane warned, “before I turn you into a gyro platter and recuse myself!”
Want to play? Leave a sentence as a comment, or write one in a post of your own and I’ll link to it.
December 15: From Oxford Dictionaries: youthquake. The runners-up: Antifa, broflake, gorpcore, kompromat, Milkshake Duck, newsjacking, unicorn, white fragility.
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January 6, 2018: From the American Dialect Society: fake news, defined as “disinformation or falsehoods presented as real news” and “actual news that is claimed to be untrue.”
Still making my way through my dad’s CDs: Julian “Cannonball” Adderley, Ivie Anderson, Louis Armstrong, Fred Astaire, Mildred Bailey, Count Basie, Tony Bennett, Art Blakey, Ruby Braff and Ellis Larkins, Clifford Brown, Dave Brubeck, Joe Bushkin, Hoagy Carmichael, Betty Carter, Ray Charles, Charlie Christian, Rosemary Clooney, Nat “King” Cole, John Coltrane, Bing Crosby, Miles Davis, Matt Dennis, Doris Day, Blossom Dearie, Paul Desmond, Tommy Dorsey, Billy Eckstine, Duke Ellington, Bill Evans, Gil Evans, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, Erroll Garner, Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Goodman, Stéphane Grappelli, Bobby Hackett, Coleman Hawkins, Woody Herman, Earl Hines, Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, Dick Hyman, Harry James, Hank Jones (my dad did tile work in his house), Louis Jordan, Stan Kenton, Barney Kessel, Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross, Peggy Lee, Mary Ann McCall, Susannah McCorkle, Dave McKenna, Ray McKinley, Marian McPartland, Johnny Mercer, Helen Merrill, Glenn Miller, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Thelonious Monk, Wes Montgomery, Gerry Mulligan, Red Norvo, Anita O’Day, Charlie Parker, Joe Pass, Art Pepper, Oscar Peterson, Bud Powell, Boyd Raeburn, Django Reinhardt, Marcus Roberts, Sonny Rollins, and now, Jimmy Rushing.
Here are two tracks from The Jazz Odyssey of James Rushing Esq. (Columbia, 1957), an LP I remember vividly from childhood. I found an expensive used copy in adulthood. When the recording was reissued on CD, I bought a copy for my dad. That’s what I’m listening to now.
“I know they like to say — people that don’t know me — they like to say I watch television. People with fake sources — you know, fake reporters, fake sources. But I don’t get to watch much television, primarily because of documents. I’m reading documents a lot.”
The Times reports that “people close to him estimate that Mr. Trump spends at least four hours a day, and sometimes as much as twice that, in front of a television.”
I admire Bill Griffith’s willingness to reference American ephemera with little or no explanation. Will someone get it? Who knows.
That sphinx’s face belongs to Bert Piel. He and his brother Harry were cartoon spokesmen for Piels Beer, with voices by Bob and Ray. (Bob Elliott was Harry; Ray Goulding, Bert.) In 2013 the cartoon brothers appeared on a television screen in a Zippy strip. And who knows in how many Zippy strips before that.
A Wikipedia article about Piels cites a beer expert who explains that the popularity of the Bert and Harry commercials hurt the brand:
“Unfortunately, the beer itself was not very good. Because of the great ads, all kinds of people bought it for the first time, hated it and spread the news everywhere about how awful it was. It was a case of terrible word of mouth caused by a wonderful ad campaign.”
You’ll find better advice in this post: How to do well on a final exam. And for those inclined to the dark side: How to do horribly on a final exam. My StatCounter stats this week show that entire classes are looking at the first of these posts: visit, visit, visit, as exams loom, loom, loom.
[Nancy, a literalist of the imagination, looks up cram in a dictionary and sits down with cake, cookies, a donut, fruit, jam, popcorn, and a sandwich.]
I know burner from The Wire; GOAT, from Infinite Jest, where it’s turned into P.G.O.A.T., a name for Joelle van Dyne, the Prettiest Girl of All Time. Saltimbocca? As my mom would say, I never heard of it. Saltimbanque, yes. Saltimbocca, no. The words have a common source in the Italian saltare. A saltimbanque jumps on a bench or platform to perform. Saltimbocca, as you may have already figured out, jumps into one’s mouth. I know about saltimbanques from Guillaume Apollinaire and Pablo Picasso.
[The Apollinaire link goes to Ron Padgett’s translation of an Apollinaire poem. The Picasso link goes to a catalogue from the National Gallery of Art. I always love a free PDF. Also, free association.]
In the ABA Journal, Bryan Garner offers some advice about how to start a sentence. Key principles:
(1) A fair percentage of sentences should begin with short contextualizing phrases, often adverbial. (2) A fair percentage should begin with one-syllable transitional words—normally But, Yet, So or even And.
[If you noticed the absence of a comma before or: the ABA Journal follows AP style, sans serial commas. As Garner writes in an earlier column, “I don't have the clout to overrule them. It's as simple as that.”]
“Orange Crate Art” is a song by Van Dyke Parks and the title of a 1995 album by Van Dyke Parks and Brian Wilson. “Orange Crate Art” is for me one of the great American songs: “Orange crate art was a place to start.”
Don’t look for premiums or coupons, as the cost of the thoughts blended in ORANGE CRATE ART pro- hibits the use of them.
Comments are welcome, appended to posts or by e-mail.
Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in the face of certain defeat.
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
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Νέος ἐφ’ ἡμέρῃ ἥλιος. [The sun is new every day.]
Heraclitus
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Every day is a new deal.
Harvey Pekar, “Alice Quinn”
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Nos plus grandes craintes, comme nos plus grandes espérances, ne sont pas au-dessus de nos forces, et nous pouvons finir par dominer les unes et réaliser les autres. [Our worst fears, like our greatest hopes, are not outside our powers, and we can come in the end to triumph over the former and to achieve the latter.]
Marcel Proust, Finding Time Again
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Surely, in the light of history, it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try.
Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living
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I don’t really deeply feel that anyone needs an airtight reason for quoting from the works of writers he loves, but it’s always nice, I’ll grant you, if he has one.
J.D. Salinger, Seymour: An Introduction
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I’m not afraid to get it right I turn around and I give it one more try
Sufjan Stevens, “Jacksonville”
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L’attention est la forme la plus rare et la plus pure de la générosité. [Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.]