July 2, 2010 · 7:26 am

The oldest profession

Here’s a trivia question for you.

What do Lynn Redgrave and Amanda Quaid have in common?

Lynn Redgrave, the award-winning actress who passed away in May, and Amanda Quaid, daughter of actor Randy Quaid and also a talented actress, both played Vivie Warren in the stage production of George Bernard Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession.

Why am I telling you this?  For several reasons that I hope you find as interesting as I do.  If not, come back tomorrow when we’ll be talking about the Fourth of July.

In 1976, my godparents flew me up to New York to see Mrs. Warren’s Profession.  It was an enormous thrill to take the shuttle up by myself, go to Lincoln Center, see this an outstanding play with my aunt, uncle and cousin, and then have dinner in the city.

The play starred Ruth Gordon as Mrs. Warren and Lynn Redgrave as her daughter, Vivie.

The night before last, a friend was kind enough to take me to see the Shakespeare Theatre Company perform Mrs. Warren’s Profession in Washington, D.C.   It starred Elizabeth Ashley as Mrs. Warren and Amanda Quaid as Vivie.  And, of course, some notably accomplished male actors, including Ted van Griethuysen, Andrew Boyer, Tony Roach and David Sabin (and may I just say that Sabin was brilliant?).

For those not familiar with the play, which was written in the late 19th century, it is a comedy about a young woman who learns that her privileged upbringing was made possible by her mother’s profitable career as an owner and manager of brothels around Europe.   I’d love to get my hands on the script.  It’s hilarious.

It has been written that the character of Vivie, who at a young age had already begun a career in the business world, was known as the “New Woman” when the play was written in 1893.  In fact, the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s literary associate Akiva Fox notes that “Shaw called Mrs. Warren’s Profession his ‘play for women.’”

Shortly after the play was first performed in London in 1894 (two years before Ruth Gordon was born, by the way), it was censored for dealing with the subject of prostitution.  These days that’s hard to imagine.

Lynn Redgrave, who played Vivie in 1976, had just starred in the movie The Happy Hooker the year before.

As for Ruth Gordon, prior to Mrs. Warren, perhaps her best known role had been Maude in Harold and Maude, which dealt with the oddest of male-female relationships, between an 80-year-old woman and a 19-year-old boy.

I am not connecting any dots here and there are many degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon.  Just some things I found interesting, that’s all.

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July 1, 2010 · 7:45 am

Rabbit rabbit!

If you haven’t spoken yet today and you say “rabbit rabbit” right now, you’ll have good luck for the rest of the month.  And you don’t even have to forward this on to anyone.  The catch is, you have to say it before you say anything else on the first day of the month, in order for it to work.  Otherwise, try again August first.

We embraced this superstition in our house about 10 years ago after hearing it from a local television meteorologist.  Channel 9’s Topper Shutt is right most of the time about the weather, so we trusted him on this one. 

I have no idea if it works, but why chance it?

When you are walking with a friend and an object comes between you, do you say “bread and butter?”   Do you have a required response?  My mother answers with “salt and pepper.”  I have a friend who responds with “come to supper.”

“Rabbit rabbit” and “bread and butter” fall right behind “knock on wood” and “break a leg” in a litany of superstitious phrases uttered in the spirit of attracting good luck.

Reach back through your ancestral traditions.  Are there any you feel comfortable sharing?

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June 30, 2010 · 7:58 am

One less product to buy

Do we really need to go over this?

I have received suggestions from readers that I review the rule for “fewer” versus “less.”  I confess, I dismissed these because the rule is clear and I assumed most people knew the difference.  I am sorry to say I was wrong.

Last week I said I wouldn’t be taking Boniva or buying Honey Bunches of Oats for the same reason:  my boycott of products whose commercials contain grammatical errors.  Now I must add to the list MGD 64, the dieters’ version of Miller Genuine Draft.  According to its current television commercial, MGD 64 has “less calories” than other reduced-calorie beers.

I am too tired to rant again so soon over the ad industry’s growing disregard for correct language.  Instead, might I just ask, why not say “fewer calories?”   I am tempted to believe it is less an oversight than it is a presumption that “fewer” flies over the heads of Miller’s target demographic.  Please tell me I’m wrong.

Is it possible that advertising companies intentionally use poor grammar to appeal to a specific class of consumers?  The ad gurus at Grey Poupon hit their high-brow target with their famous commercial years ago.  Pardon me, but it seems Miller is deliberately going for a less sophisticated crowd with its overt illiteracy.

Everyone knows “less” refers to an amount of something, as in less beer.  “Fewer” refers to a number of something, as in “fewer calories.” 

Less snow, fewer snowflakes.  Less hair, fewer strands.  Yes, got it.

Now can we move on to something a little less obvious?

Postscript:  Speaking of intentional poor grammar, am I the only one wondering why yesterday South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham phrased his question to Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, “Where were you at on Christmas Day?”  He knows better.

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June 29, 2010 · 7:28 am

What’s your line?

One of my readers requested I write a piece on memorable lines from movies.  Initially I loved the idea.  We all have our favorites.  The reader kicked off her request with a classic line, uttered by Olympia Dukakis in Steel Magnolias: “The only thing that separates us from the animals is our ability to accessorize.”  From that same movie I always liked:  “If you can’t say anything nice about anybody, come sit by me.”

As I developed the piece I broke out in hives because I didn’t know where to stop.  I would love to know yours but please, don’t break out in hives.

First, let’s eliminate all the obvious ones:  “Go ahead, make my day.”  “You can’t handle the truth.”  “Frankly my dear…”  And let’s clear away this one that’s going around now, from Get Him to the Greek, “When the world slips you a Jeffrey, stroke the furry wall.”  I already got some great quotes from Princess Bride and Monty Python movies on my June 2 post on bdelygmias.

I’ll throw out a few and let’s see where they take us. Perhaps you’d like to respond either by identifying the movie or, better yet, giving me another line from the same movie.  Be forewarned, there might be multiple quotes from the same movie.  Or, feel free to post one or more of your own, with or without the movie cited.

  1. Don’t much excite you except whores…and biscuits.
  2. Does this proposition entail my dressing up as Little Bo Peep?
  3. The Zen philosopher Basho once wrote, ‘A flute with no holes is not a flute. A donut with no hole is a Danish.’
  4. We consider ourselves bi-coastal if you consider the Mississippi River one of the coasts.
  5. I got off that boat with nothing but my dancer’s belt and a tube of ChapStick.
  6. We have so much in common.  We both love soup.  And snow peas.
  7. There’s what’s right and there’s what’s right and never the twain shall meet.
  8. Now you take that diaper off your head and you put it back on your sister!
  9. I found myself driving past convenience stores…that weren’t on the way home.
  10. Value this time in your life kids, because this is the time in your life when you still have your choices, and it goes by so quickly. When you’re a teenager you think you can do anything, and you do. Your twenties are a blur. Your thirties, you raise your family, you make a little money and you think to yourself, “What happened to my twenties?”  Your forties, you grow a little pot belly, you grow another chin. The music starts to get too loud and one of your old girlfriends from high school becomes a grandmother.  Your fifties, you have a minor surgery. You’ll call it a procedure, but it’s a surgery. Your sixties, you have a major surgery, the music is still loud but it doesn’t matter because you can’t hear it anyway.  Seventies, you and the wife retire to Fort Lauderdale, you start eating dinner at two, lunch around ten, breakfast the night before.  And you spend most of your time wandering around malls looking for the ultimate in soft yogurt and muttering “how come the kids don’t call?” By your eighties, you’ve had a major stroke, and you end up babbling to some Jamaican nurse who your wife can’t stand but who you call mama.  Any questions?

Oh, no, we didn’t even touch Young Frankenstein.  Or any Woody Allen.  Hives.

Hint:  If you are totally stumped, check the tags below for clues.

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June 28, 2010 · 7:46 am

Sunday schooling

My thanks go to Merl Reagle, editor of the crossword puzzle in The Washington Post’s Sunday magazine, who practically wrote this blog post for me.

I had intended to write a follow-up to pieces I posted earlier on mispronunciations, misspellings and malapropisms. Then Sunday’s puzzle beat me to it, using something Reagle called “eggcorns.” 

Spoiler alert:  If you haven’t done the Sunday puzzle and intend to, you will want to skip over this for now.

Eggcorns, Reagle explains, are things people say and write that are technically incorrect but have a logic of their own.  For example, the business located to the right of yours is “next store.”  Get it? 

In the puzzle, the clues are what make the incorrect phrases or spellings correct.  I will leave it to you to read those in the crossword itself.  Here I will list a few of the answers as examples of commonly misspelled or mis-uttered phrases.  We should take note, as I suspect we’ve all made at least one of these errors in our lifetimes.  Recognize any?

  1. wet one’s appetite
  2. butt naked
  3. hone in on
  4. sacreligious
  5. bellweather
  6. laxadaisical
  7. expatriot
  8. Here, here
  9. unchartered waters
  10. a tough road to hoe

If any of these looks correct to you, see me after class and I will tell you what it is supposed to be.

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June 26, 2010 · 7:45 am

Hair zombie

This week I made the unfortunate discovery that I left both my hair dryer and my straightening iron at our beach rental.  Chances are slim that I’ll ever see them again so, to get this mop of mine under control, I went out and replaced them.

I went to a good salon and invested in the deluxe Chi Ceramic Hair Styling Iron (because I might want to curl my hair after I straighten it).

I brought it home, pulled it out of the box and consulted the instruction booklet. 

Under Safety Instructions it said, “Never use while sleeping.”

I am aware that some people walk and talk in their sleep, but style their hair? 

Just because it was right there, I pulled out the booklet for the blow dryer, manufactured by a different company.  “Never use while sleeping.”

Now there are lots of women who wish we could wake up in the morning fully coiffed for the day, but I doubt we’ve ever considered doing our hair before we wake up.

I couldn’t resist going through the drawer in our house where we keep all our appliance paperwork, to see what else jumped out.  “Do not allow children to play in dishwasher.”  Darn, now I’ll have to buy a swing set.

No doubt the Internet is brimming with examples of silly safety warnings.  Do you have any of your own?

Reminder:  Word Nymph takes Sundays off.  Wonder if she’ll wake up for church tomorrow with a beautifully styled do.

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June 24, 2010 · 7:50 am

Modern maturity

I have gotten used to the notion of a United States president who is younger than I am.  I sat through many Back-to-School Night presentations by 22-year-old teachers, without judging.  I am even okay with being older than Supreme Court justice nominee Elena Kagan.

But I got a kick-in-the-gut blow as I pulled the AARP Magazine out of the mailbox and saw on the cover Valerie Bertinelli, who happens to be four months and 10 days younger than I.  By the way, she’s five days older than Elena Kagan.

AARP The Magazine comes addressed to my husband, though I am AARP-eligible.  I never had the guts to peel back the cover until yesterday—had to read about Valerie.   After all, her 1970s TV character, Barbara Cooper, and I were practically sisters.

The reason I never ventured inside the magazine?  I just knew there’d be articles about all sorts of scary aging topics, and the ads – nothing I’d need, to be sure.

I was surprised.  There’s an article on Sex and the City’s Cynthia Nixon and her work in promoting cancer research.  She’s 44, in case you were wondering.  A big picture of George Clooney appears just inside the front cover.  What for?  Does it really matter?  There’s a nice piece on microbreweries around the country and a funny interview with Dave Barry.  I also learned that Sean Penn, a famed member of Hollywood’s Brat Pack, will turn 50 this summer.

The writing is pretty edgy too.

The ads?  No Depends, or Metamucil or Geritol (do they even make Geritol anymore?).   It’s no surprise that there are plenty of ads for AARP products and services, including motorcycle insurance.  There’s an ad for an AARP-sponsored concert featuring Gladys Knight, B.B. King, Los Lobos, Gloria Gaynor, Crosby, Stills & Nash and Richie Havens.  There’s also an ad for Dr. Scholl’s.  I know firsthand that those feel really good on 50-year-old feet but then I also wore their exercise sandals when I was 14.

The magazine’s featured recipe is for tandoori chicken, whereas I expected any recipe offered by AARP would involve smothering something in cream of mushroom soup.

And guess what else?  A big fat crossword puzzle!

I’m thinking I might need my own subscription.

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June 23, 2010 · 7:50 am

Summer smellstice

Yesterday The Washington Post showcased, in a photo essay of sorts on the front page, how various cultures around the world celebrated the summer solstice.  Twenty thousand revelers watched the sun rise at Stonehenge, a man in Tel Aviv ran in 94-degree heat as the sun set over the Mediterranean Sea, throngs of yogis saluted the sun in Times Square and, in Tiwanaku, Bolivia, an Andean religious leader made a spiritual offering over a fire in celebration of the Aymara new year.

I made pesto.

And today I awoke to the lingering aroma of fresh basil, one of the signature smells of summer.

A few weeks ago we talked about the sounds of summer.  Now that it’s officially summer, smells are what really get me going.  If your olfactory sense is as keen as mine—even if it isn’t—the faintest of smells can take you on the most vivid of journeys, to a certain time or place.  Am I right?

The first batch of pesto scraped out of my Cuisinart kicks off the season.

What else?  For me, it’s the smell of a lime Popsicle, honeysuckle, Sea and Ski suntan lotion and ripe strawberries.  Maybe a fresh peach.  Definitely a charcoal grill.

I don’t know if they even make Sea and Ski anymore, but I can tell you one whiff and I’d be on the beach in Ocean City, Maryland, around 1965, guzzling my Aunt Mary Lee’s lemonade.  Last week a friend gave me a scented candle that smells just like Coppertone Tanning Butter and that took me to a neighborhood swimming pool in 1971.  I don’t think Coppertone even makes tanning butter anymore.  It used to come in a yellowish jar with a brown lid.

Today where I live it’s supposed to be 98 degrees with 90 percent humidity.  While I am out buying lime Popsicles, maybe you can tell me what does it for you—what smells signify summer?  Do they take you anywhere?

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June 22, 2010 · 7:50 am

Behind the curve

Where have I been, under a rock perhaps, that I have never heard of “lingua franca?” 

Do you ever notice a word or phrase for the first time and then, all of a sudden, you read it everywhere? 

Recently, I was rushing to finish my June issue of Vanity Fair, as July had just arrived, and I ran across this phrase, lingua franca.  Because I was on a plane, I was unable to look it up.  My guess at a literal translation was “French tongue,” but that didn’t seem to make sense.

In an article called Playing for the World, preceding the start of the World Cup, A. A. Gill wrote, “It isn’t music or movies or pizza that is the lingua franca of the globe. It’s the Beautiful Game.”  Then, I confess, I lingered unduly on the 12-page photo spread of the World Cup athletes.  Annie Leibovitz, I want your job, if just for one day.  But I digress.

I later noticed, in the same issue of the magazine, in different places and in different contexts, lingua franca appeared twice more.

Yesterday I remembered to look it up.  An hour’s worth of cursory research confounded me further. 

You may already know this, but lingua franca is the term for a hybrid language, like pidgin, that is spoken by persons not sharing a common native language, to communicate with one another.  There seem to be dozens of different forms spoken in Europe, the Middle East and South America.

Okay, so I got that.  But now all of a sudden it’s a simile.  It’s a metaphor.  And it’s everywhere.

Again, my research was cursory, so my findings may not be exact, and the sources are obscure.  Either way, here are some examples I dug up.

“The Dow is certainly Wall Street’s lingua franca.”

“T-shirts are the lingua franca of Silicon Valley.”

“Movies are the lingua franca of the twentieth century.”

“Sarcasm is the lingua franca of the Internets [sic].”

More literally, in some faiths, a language called Adamic “is the lingua franca of Heaven.”

I read further that Lingua Franca is the name of a literary magazine that closed down in 2001, one I think I would have liked.  It’s also the name of a band out of Flint, Michigan; the name of a CD by an Australian group called The World According to James; and the names of lyrical movements in several countries. 

I hate it when something is cliché before I ever become aware of it.  Reminds me of the “What’s In and What’s Out” list that comes out every January 1st.  Far too often, it’s already Out before I knew it was In.

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