Pater Familias » Uncategorized

CLARK GABLE AND THE 50TH BIRTHDAY.

Philip — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 00:44:41 +0000

CLARK GABLE AND THE 50TH BIRTHDAY. Adela Rogers St. Johns told me that she was on a television talk show once which was interrupted when Clark Gable telephoned in. He told the host to ask her about her 50th birthday. … Continue reading →

ADELA ROGERS ST. JOHNS ON MISTRESSES.

Philip — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 01:42:59 +0000

ADELA ROGERS ST. JOHNS ON MISTRESSES. Adela Rogers St. Johns had a theory, based on her reading, that all the great mistresses were great clowns. She said that she had Marion Davies in mind as the best example of the theory. Marion Davies was the mistress of William Randolph Hearst, and Ms. Rogers knew her well. In addition to her reading, living in Hollywood exposed her to a lot of mistresses.

ADELA ROGERS ST. JOHNS ON DEFENDANTS IN CAPITAL CASES.

Philip — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 00:40:19 +0000

ADELA ROGERS ST. JOHNS ON DEFENDANTS IN CAPITAL CASES. Earl Rogers only lost 3 out of the 77 murder cases he tried. His daughter said that every one of people that Rogers defended in capital cases was broken by the … Continue reading →

SH*T MY DAD SAYS AND THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST TABLE.

Philip — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 22:16:44 +0000

SH*T MY DAD SAYS AND THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST TABLE. The content is different, and the technology (Twitter) is different, but there are similarities between SH*T MY DAD SAYS, which preserves what a father says, and this blog. As I said here, this blog is modeled on THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST TABLE and tries to preserve the spirit of my father holding forth at the dinner table.

LIFE LESSONS FROM SH*T MY DAD SAYS.

Philip — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 21:10:05 +0000

LIFE LESSONS FROM SH*T MY DAD SAYS. Justin Halpern’s dad has a number of life lessons that are passed on from father to son. I wish I had access to these when I was young or that the book had been published in time for me to pass them on to my kids when they were young. Here are some examples of the life lessons:

On the first day of kindergarten:

“You thought it was hard. If kindergarten is busting your ass, I got some bad news for you about the rest of life.”

On your team not playing badly when you’re pitching:

“You can’t go getting mad at people because they’re shitty. Life will get mad at them, don’t worry.”

I think there is a world view underlying the aphorisms. Part of it is that there is lot of aggravating stuff in the world (the dad would express this more pungently), and you should expect it, recognize it, and ignore it.

SH*T MY DAD SAYS.

Philip — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 20:21:33 +0000

SH*T MY DAD SAYS. Our friend Nisma Baig gave me a copy of SH*T MY DAD SAYS by Justin Halpern for Christmas. Halpern created a Twitter page entitled “Shit My Dad Says” “to keep a record of the crazy things that come out of his mouth.” Soon he had over 300,000 followers and eventually there was a TV series, starring William Shatner, based on the Twitter page. There was a time when Annalisa was considering doing a series of comics (to be entitled “Adventures of Superdad”) devoted to my exploits. Instead, she gave me this blog.

DREAMING OF BECOMING A LEMON CUPCAKE.

Philip — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 19:22:23 +0000

DREAMING OF BECOMING A LEMON CUPCAKE. I posted here about how Mary Jane has interesting dreams. She told me recently that she had dreamed that she was turning into a lemon cupcake. I couldn’t even imagine what that entailed and asked her to describe the dream. She said: “I was looking at a piece of sky blue fabric dotted very evenly with yellow flowers, like a ribbon, drawing me closer. The yellow flowers were getting bigger and bigger and opening up and I was falling into them. I knew deep in my heart that I was turning into a lemon cupcake.”

“YOU’RE LOOKING GOOD.”

Philip — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 22:45:19 +0000

“YOU’RE LOOKING GOOD.” For a number of years I have quoted Ray Meyer, the long-time basketball coach at De Paul, to the effect that there are three ages of man: youth, middle age, and “You’re looking good.” A friend found a Christmas card for me this year that shows two typical snowmen and a skinny snowman. The caption is: “You’re looking good, Frosty.” Many thanks for the card.

MAKING SURE ALL THE AGREEMENTS ARE THE SAME.

Philip — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 00:35:11 +0000

MAKING SURE ALL THE AGREEMENTS ARE THE SAME. European lawyers seemed to make the signing of agreements a more formal event than American lawyers do. In addition to the sense of ceremony, the practice is for the signatories to initial each page of the agreements, in contrast with America, where, often, especially when there are a large number of parties, only execution pages are signed and the agreements are sometimes assembled later. It always seemed to me that the European practice was better, but I never heard of any problems arising from not initialing each page. Now, the Wall Street Journal (December 5) has an article by Ashby Jones about a marital-property agreement between Frank McCourt and his then wife Jamie which involved the ownership of the Los Angeles Dodgers. In the course of a contested divorce, it developed that “…there were discrepancies among the original six signed copies, namely that attachments to three named Mr. McCourt as the sole owner of the Dodgers while attachments to the three others didn’t.”

THE MCGURK EFFECT.

Philip — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 22:53:40 +0000

THE MCGURK EFFECT. I have been claiming for some time now that I am not good at lip reading; Mary Jane is the one who can tell what the disappointed athletes are saying. Apparently I am better at it than I think. I have been introduced to the McGurk Effect. This YouTube from the BBC demonstrates it. When I looked at lips making an “f” sound (“fa—fa—fa—fa”) while listening to an audio of a “d” sound (“da—da—da—da”), I heard the “f” sound. I was instinctively lip reading. Here is a wikipedia article on the McGurk Effect. It was discovered in 1976. It shows that: “The visual information a person gets from seeing a person speak changes the way they hear the sound.” The McGurk Effect results from the brain’s effort “to provide your consciousness with its best guess about what the incoming information is trying to tell it.” Sometimes when confronted with conflicting information from the eye and the ear, the brain processes the information into a third sound (“‘ga’ auditory and ‘ba’ visual produce ‘bga’”). When somebody is watching a dubbed movie, the brain is trying to ignore the visual information.

THE EGGCORN DATABASE.

Philip — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 01:57:55 +0000

THE EGGCORN DATABASE. There is an eggcorn database, maintained by Chris Waigl and located here. At the same site there is an eggcorn forum. There are over 625 eggcorns in the database, with examples of usage and discussion for each entry. The test that the database applies for an eggcorn is: “The crucial element is that the new form makes sense: for anyone except lexicographers or other people trained in etymology, more sense than the original form in many cases.” Apparently, like the multiple occurrences of “eggcorn” itself, there are multiple independent occurrences of most eggcorns.

EGGCORNS.

Philip — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 01:55:36 +0000

EGGCORNS. I have learned another new word—”eggcorn”. This wikipedia article defines an eggcorn as: “an idiosyncratic substitution of a word or phrase for a word or words that sound similar or identical in the speaker’s dialect. The new phrase introduces a meaning that is different from the original, but plausible in the same context….” The article gives examples: “ex-patriot” instead of “expatriate”; “mating name” instead of “maiden name”; “on the spurt of the moment” instead of “on the spur of the moment”. The word “eggcorn” was coined by the linguists at the Language Log blog. It was taken from the usage of “eggcorn” for “acorn”. Mark Liberman says in this post at that site that internet data shows that “eggcorn” is used about once for every 1000 uses of “acorn”. Liberman credits Greg Pullum for the observation that “eggcorns are tiny little poems, a symptom of human intelligence and creativity.”