quotable

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Columnist Mark Shields:

My favorite Washington, D.C., TV news anchorman is ABC's Gordon Peterson, who one night when required to give one more meaningless prime-time promo for the station's late-night newscast read it this way: "Astronauts back on the moon, fire in Bethesda, Redskins in trouble," before adding on his own, "Verbs at 11:00."

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breakout performance

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Here's another YouTube video, thanks to tvinjapan, featuring another live-action impersonation of a video game. I found this impressive, but was particularly amused at the player's remarks afterward.

( and I say it's amusing! )

all, all...

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...are sleeping on the hill.

I've been re-re-[whatever]-reading Edgar Lee Masters's masterpiece, Spoon River Anthology, and it occurred to me that it might be available at Project Gutenberg. And it is. So I thought I'd link to it and see if I could induce anybody out there to try it. It's hypnotic and affecting; maybe the most straightforward verse I know of, bereft of rhyme and meter, stripped down to the most basic language. In about a page, each resident of Spoon River tells his or her tale, or what matters of it. It goes down easy, and kicks like a mule.

Peleg Poague

HORSES and men are just alike.
There was my stallion, Billy Lee,
Black as a cat and trim as a deer,
With an eye of fire, keen to start,
And he could hit the fastest speed
Of any racer around Spoon River.
But just as you'd think he couldn't lose,
With his lead of fifty yards or more,
He'd rear himself and throw the rider,
And fall back over, tangled up,
Completely gone to pieces.
You see he was a perfect fraud:
He couldn't win, he couldn't work,
He was too light to haul or plow with,
And no one wanted colts from him.
And when I tried to drive him--well,
He ran away and killed me.

Walter Simmons

MY parents thought that I would be
As great as Edison or greater:
For as a boy I made balloons
And wondrous kites and toys with clocks
And little engines with tracks to run on
And telephones of cans and thread.
I played the cornet and painted pictures,
Modeled in clay and took the part
Of the villain in the "Octoroon."
But then at twenty--one I married
And had to live, and so, to live
I learned the trade of making watches
And kept the jewelry store on the square,
Thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking,--
Not of business, but of the engine
I studied the calculus to build.
And all Spoon River watched and waited
To see it work, but it never worked.
And a few kind souls believed my genius
Was somehow hampered by the store.
It wasn't true.
The truth was this:
I did not have the brains.

Samples don't convey it. The effect is cumulative. I give this my highest rating. Read and see how it's done.
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