3:29 p.m. - 2007-02-01
In Which I Try My Hand at Footnotes
Some things that didn't make it into my one man show "Me, Me, Look at ME!!: A One Man Show":
OPENING SENTENCES FROM SOME OF MY MANY NOVELS*:
1) I knew that my career as a banker was over the day I saw the giraffe cry.
2) Four thousand clowns, a truckload of ammunition, and a small-town Arbor Day parade: it was the perfect storm.
3) I wish I'd known then what I know now: longevity is how long you LIVE, not how long you ARE. **
4) They call them the roaring twenties, but it was really more of a gentle purring sound, punctuated by the occasional slide whistle.
5) I remember thinking that long, chocolatey night: this is the sort of thing that only happens forty-six times in a lifetime.
6) Nobody ever expected Electric Eel Week to be marred by tragedy, yet somehow it always was.
7) It wasn't for nothing that they called me Protuberant Left Kidney Louie.
8) As night fell I was arguing Pascal's wager with my fellow carnies. ***
9) Sometimes, the mop knows before you do.
10) The Carny Code is very clear on this point: no reprisal without the EXPRESS PERMISSION of the dean.
11) Before I knew it I was practically being suffocated by opossums, and I couldn't help but think that maybe I'd made some bad choices.
12) What's the sound of one hand clapping? I found out that fateful night at La Scala, mere hours after a strange rash of left hand amputations. ****
* I think I may have stolen this idea from McSweeney's.
** Stolen from this very blog.
*** Actually, I developed this further and it made its way into the show.
**** I realize this is TWO sentences, not one. Maybe I should have just put "Openings From Some of My Many Novels". But that sounds kind of, I don't know, strange. Like the novels have ears or vaginas or something.
SEVERAL RHYMING COUPLETS WITH CARNIES AS THEIR SUBJECT:
1) A carny on the move
cannot be disproved.
2) A carny in a rage
shall ne'er be assuaged
3) A whiskey and a gun
is a carny's wholesome fun.
4) A carny in a suit:
the apocalypse afoot!
5) A carny with a blade:
were that the fates forbade!
A RYYMING COUPLET WITH SWEDES AS ITS SUBJECT:
A friend who's a Swede
is no friend indeed.
Actually, this hasn't been borne out by experience, as I've never had a Swedish friend, although my one HALF-Swedish friend is a good friend, one whom I would describe as "a friend indeed". But of course rhyming couplets need not be true to be enjoyable!
Speaking of Swedes, there's this one Bergman movie, I think it's called "Light in Winter" or "Winter Light", or something like that. It features Max Von Sydow looking suicidal, a mean priest, a sad woman with eczema, no music but lots of clock sounds, and despair to spare! It's seventy minutes but feels like four hours. If you have the winter blahs or even a trace of the mildest depression, do not see this movie, JUST DON'T.
A BUNCH OF PROVERB/APHORISM THINGIES NOT RELATED BY TOPIC:
1) Give a jazzman an inch and he'll take twenty choruses. If it's a blues, he'll take thirty.
2) You may choose to "keep your eyes on the prize", but in doing so you prevent yourself from keeping your "eye on the sparrow". Suppose the going gets narrow? Well, what then? Well, well, well, well?
3) Where some see merely see the hornets' nest, others see opportunity, especially when the hornets are made of jewels and their nest is made of hundred dollar bills.
4) Sleeping dogs are boring. Poke them! POKE THEM!
POSTSCRIPT: I looked up the name of the Bergman film. The usual English translation is "Winter Light". It also has a crazy Swedish name.
