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A veritable Who's Who of Who's That. (Richard LeRoy on movies with no one famous in the cast)
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I shoot every third salesman, and #2 just left. (Sign in Prescott Grey's office)
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My dad was fond of three odd lunch items: cervelat (a Swiss sausage), braunschweiger (a soft liver spread—bleah), and Durkee's salad dressing. From the Wikipedia article on the Glidden paint corporation, I learned that Glidden bought Durkee & Co., and that Durkee's sauce was reputedly a favorite of President Lincoln. From Durkee's web page:
In 1857, Eugene R. Durkee created the product that helped make him famous, which today we call Durkee Famous Sauce. It was the first prepared and packaged salad dressing. To appreciate this endeavor, remember, this was created prior to refrigeration. It was carried west by the pioneers. Historians have found old, discarded Durkee dressing bottles along covered-wagon trails. Durkee Famous Sauce was even purported to be stocked in Mary Todd Lincoln's pantry and served to Abraham Lincoln in the White House during the Civil War.
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Hooker: Buy a lady a drink?
Patron: As soon as one shows up.
My friend Frank says he has actually used this line. He is very tall and wide, though. I wouldn't dare. I hate pain.
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Me: Don't mind me, I'm just part of the furniture here.
Dan Lunceford: I would never describe you as furniture. Furniture is utilitarian.
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Four life stages of soprano: bel canto; can belto; can't belto; can't canto.
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There are four types of tenors. A countertenor sings alto and even soprano parts in falsetto voice. Lyric tenors are for light romantic roles, while dramatic tenors are for tragic roles. Heldentenors (literally, “heroic tenors”) are for Wagner.
Two of my voice teachers said that if I had started younger I could have been a Heldentenor. The joke goes that there are four types of tenors:
- A countertenor has no testicles.
- A lyric tenor has one.
- A dramatic tenor has two.
- A Heldentenor has two, but he is standing on one of them.
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Neologism file: travedy = travesty x tragedy (Laurelle Powers)
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Neologism file: cargyle = the diamond-shaped patch of debris in the middle of a busy intersection that both straight and turning cars miss (Gary Henderson)
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Neologism file: quoozy = queasy x woozy (Nan)
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Perl: The popular version of Intercal. (Dworkin Müller)
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The video game Dance Dance Revolution requires that players dance around on a special mat to score. One friend of mine who was rather overweight at graduation showed up two years later looking quite svelte, and attributed it all to spending significant time playing it.
Marcia said there was a new one called Pole Dance Revolution that was being test-marketed at the Burning Man Festival.
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Goddamn English people have ruined our language. (JS 2009-01-02)
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Eastern New Mexico University in Portales is a first-rate school for music and performing arts, among other departments. However, compared with my alma mater New Mexico Tech, it is somewhat less strong in science.
My friend Phil Johnson and I used to go birding frequently in Boone's Draw, a beautiful wooded tract near Portales that is one of the best birding spots in the state, surrounded as it is for many miles in every direction by treeless grasslands. The spot is also known to ENMU students as a party spot, since it is miles out of town and quite isolated. Tony Gennaro, the science department, told us that there were rumors of devil worship there, but based on our experience camping out one weekend there, Phil judged that beer worship was more likely.
One fine day we encountered a big hulking guy creeping around with a bow and arrow. Turns out that he was a student in an ENMU anthropology course. The instructor had taught them how to make knapped flint arrowheads, and promised this student that if he could successfully slay an actual bunny rabbit with it, he was guaranteed an A.
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