Archive for the ‘Earworms’ Category

The first step

August 15, 2026

Now, a piece of my life story you have heard about from my side of the event — the first meeting of Ann Walcutt Daingerfield and Arnold Melchior Zwicky (which happened in the bowels of the Firestone Library at Princeton University) — from Ann’s viewpoint, as rehearsed in e-mail yesterday from our old friend Benita Bendon Campbell:

In September of 1959, I called Ann, who was languishing in Lexington [KY] and said something like, “I have a job and a nice apartment in Princeton. Would you like to join me?” She replied, “Bonnie, I am so miserable that if someone said ‘I have a job and an apartment in Hell. Would you like to join me?’ I would say, ‘Yes!'”

So she did. A week or so thereafter, she started a job in the Language Lab. Mr. Keefer [AZ: possibly Kiefer] was her boss and she reported in pleased tones about a pair of Student Assistants called “Franklyn and his partner Arnold.” [AZ: partner as in teammates / buddies; Frank Carr and I were roommates for three years]

That is how the milk got into the coconut.

I Did It. By Jove, I Did It.

And deserves credit.

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Writers’ night at the Hotel De Luxe

March 28, 2024

Last night: a long — stretching over three hours of sleep, with a whizz break in the middle — and vivid story dream in which Ellen Kaisse (an old friend and a frequent character on this blog) and I were holed up for an entire night in an elegant hotel — much like the actual Beverly Hills Hotel — where we had a suite in which we were expected to produce a script for a film. The place looked like your ordinary luxury suite, except that it was dominated by a huge desk. Which, at the pressing of several buttons, converted magically into a fully functioning office, with computers, printers, phones, paper files, assorted office supplies, and of course a coffee maker. (But no staff, not even assistants to take things down for us. If we got hungry, we were to order food from room service.) Our work site for the long dark night.

We were expected to hack out an entire draft script, as well as suggestions for casting for the parts, costumes, and sets, plus a sketch of a score for the movie (I suspect that the score was especially significant to my having this dream; details to follow).

Somehow the actual subject of the film, which Ellen and I labored over, elaborately, for all those hours of my sleep, has dissolved, as dream material often does on awakening.

We didn’t question being put to work at the Hotel De Luxe through the night; apparently, that was a regular thing in Hollywood, just the way things worked there.

The dream was not at all unpleasant, sometimes actually delightful. Well, Ellen is wonderful company and an excellent person to exchange ideas with.

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For all the saints

November 4, 2019

In Mexican tradition, November 1st is the central point in the Days of the Dead (October 31st through November 2nd), while in older Christian tradition it’s All Saints’ (or, as many would have it, Saints) Day. For some of us, there is specific music for the day: the magnificent processional hymn “For All the Saints”, sung to the Ralph Vaughan Williams tune Sine Nomine.


(#1) Fra Angelico, The Forerunners of Christ with Saints and Martyrs (from the 1420s, tempera on poplar wood) (from Wikipedia)

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Punallusive protest

July 14, 2018

Passed on to me by Joe Transue, this sign from massive protests in London against the current state visit by Helmet Grabpussy:

(#1)

Either this is just a taunt, or you get the allusion — and then you are probably suffering from an earworm, with the words:

We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone
All in all it’s just another brick in the wall
All in all you’re just another brick in the wall

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Earworms, snowmen, and parodies

May 30, 2015

In the June 1st New Yorker, this cartoon by Bob Eckstein:

(#1)

Not the first posting on this blog about earworms.

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