A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Graphic by Open-ClipArt Vectors from Pixabay From Facebook's Captain Grammar Pants group : This is a non-standard post, driven by the fact that I am in self-quarantine; it has nothing to do with grammar. If you want all of your friends to (figuratively) blow up your newsfeed, just ask them to take a film title and substitute "toilet paper" for one of the nouns. For example: O Toilet Paper, Where Art Thou? My Fractured Toilet Paper Movie Titles A Toilet Paper Too Far The Toilet Paper on the River Kwai Toilet Paper Now The Battle of Toilet Paper Zero Dark Toilet Paper Captain Toilet Paper Raiders of the Lost Toilet Paper Revenge of the Toilet Papers Zulu Toilet Paper Band of Toilet Papers The Lord of the Toilet Paper Star Wars - Episode I: The Phantom Toilet Paper Star Wars - Episode II: Toilet Paper of the Clones Star Wars - Episode III: Toilet Paper of the Sith Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Toilet Paper Star Wars - Episode V: The Toilet Paper S...

Graphic by Open-ClipArt Vectors from Pixabay In these dark and scary times when most of us ﹘ except virus deniers, stubborn individualists, skeptical libertarians, the occasional inebriated Spring Breaker and #CoronaKatie ﹘ are coping with the New Normality of self-quarantines, social distancing, and trying to remember the symptoms of the novel coronavirus known as COVID-19, humor is an excellent and essential coping mechanism. Now, I know that laughter is not the best medicine to fight the virus itself; avoiding infected persons, washing hands with soap and water, staying away from places where 10 or more people gather, and being mindful of your surroundings are the best preventive measures. But in a world where the reports of more cases and more deaths assail our eyes, ears, and nervous systems on a 24/7 basis, humor ﹘ even gallows humor ﹘ helps keep us sane and a bit less stressed out. So, without further ado, here are some suggestions for Broadway musicals with a COVID...

Photo Illustration Credit: Pixabay Last night, while I was on Twitter, I came across a tweet by novelist Harry Turtledove, the guy who writes alternative history novels along the lines of Guns of the South and Ruled Britannia. I follow him on Twitter, and although I can't say we are "friends" or even "acquaintances," we have exchanged tweets and replies on that social medium. He has even liked quite a few of my tweets, especially if they are about writing, books, or politics. (On that topic, we both share a dislike for Donald Trump and his divisive brand of "conservatism.") Anyway, before I logged off from my computer last night before dinner, I came across one of Harry's typically clever tweets: Harry Turtledove @HNTurtledove · Jan 28 #AddAWordRuinABook For Whom the Jingle Bell Tolls To Have Lunch and to Have Not The Great Big Gatsby Catcher in the Rye Bread The Halloween Mask of Apollo Johnny Got His S...

Photo Credit: Alex Diaz-Granados The Coffee Drinker's Creed (A Riff on the U.S. Marine Corps' Rifleman's Creed) This is my coffee mug. There are many like it, but this one is mine.  My coffee mug is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. My coffee mug, without me, is useless. Without my coffee mug, I am useless. I must drink my coffee completely. I must take in its warm goodness to defeat my fatigue that is trying to cloud my mind. I must drink my coffee before my coffee is cold. I will. My coffee mug and I know that what counts in this morning is not the lure of sleep, the grogginess in our mind nor the bed that calls to us. We know that it is the caffeine that counts. We will drink. My coffee mug is human, even as I am, because it is my life. Thus, I will learn my coffee as a brother. I will learn its weaknesses, its strength, its beans, its caffeine, its aroma, and its taste. I will ever guard i...

(C) 2000    Carol Publishing Group  R oman soldiers, as we all know, didn't wear watches at the height of the Caesars' power. Not because they couldn't afford even an inexpensive digital watch, mind you, but simply because the watch -- heck, even the mechanical clock -- hadn't yet been invented. Yet, as Bill Givens will cheerfully point out in his extremely amusing (and for some film producers, dismaying) collection of film flubs, some ancients were way ahead of themselves. Modern watches, wedding rings and other anachronisms make their little unexpected cameos in such set-in-ancient-times epics as The Ten Commandments, The Viking Queen, and Spartacus. Givens' Roman Soldiers Don't Wear Watches: 333 Film Flubs -- Memorable Movie Mistakes is a compilation of continuity errors, slips of dialogue, film-flipping flaws, and other unexpected mistakes that often pop up during production. Some of them have been published in other volumes of his successful ...

(C) 2010 Abrams ComicArts and Topps Company When Topps Chewing Gum reintroduced Wacky Packages to the public in 1973 after a short mid-1960s  production run, I was 10 years old and still re-assimilating to American culture after living abroad for six years. I was picking up the language in leaps and bounds, and my reading comprehension skills were above the fourth grade level. I was a spirited, fun-loving kid then, and like many of my peers, I loved the irreverent "Wackys" that poked fun at name-brand products and, by extension, America's consumer culture. When I was a lad of 11, I thought that this parody of Cheer detergent (a brand my mother often bought) was the epitome of hilarity. (C) 1974 Topps Chewing Gum, Inc. Of course, at that age I didn't think in terms of Oh, Topps is satirizing America's consumer culture. Adult-style analyses such as that would only occur to me years later. 10-year-old me thought the parodies of products one would find at...

What makes a good movie "good" or a great movie "great"? The answer, of course, is, "many things." You have to have a good story, a well-written script (ideally with memorable lines and lots of linear logic!), a director with a fine eye for detail and organizational skills that rival Ike's before D-Day, a well-trained crew, a well-versed composer, a top-notch special-effects team, and a visionary producer with a dream in his mind and a deep pocket to match (but at the same time have better fiscal discipline than some Presidents). Have I forgotten anything? Oh, yeah. And you gotta have a good cast. Let's face it. Until the late 1960s, we did not go to see the latest Michael Curtiz or Victor Fleming picture like we go watch the new one from Spielberg or, God forbid, the latest Michael Bay offering. No, we (or our parents and grandparents) went to see the new Gable and Lombard flick at the Bijou or Rialto. If you went to a John Wayne picture -- as m...

The Lady Loses The best story about Coolidge's taciturnity, told by his wife, concerns the society woman who said, as she sat down next to him at a dinner party, "You must talk to me, Mr. Coolidge. I made a bet today that I could get more than two words out of you." "You lose," said Coolidge. How to Charge Once when Lincoln was in the War Department an officer who was in a big hurry slam-banged into him, then offered "ten thousand pardons" when he saw who it was. "One is enough," smiled Lincoln. "I wish the whole army would charge like that." -- From Presidential Anecdotes, by Paul F. Boller, Jr. One of the most curious -- and vexing -- flaws in the U.S. public education system is the way that American history, especially its political history, is taught in all the 50 states. Having attended public schools in the 1970s and 1980s, I still have vivid memories of (a) textbooks with tons of illustrations but dry, boring...