Quote It!

Mehr Licht! and kiss me, Hardy, for we shall always have Paris, only if you climb Mount Fuji, o Snail--but slowly!--I yam what I yam, and I yam a donut, hic Rhodus, hic salta!

Afghans Avenge Florida Koran Burning, Killing 12

But is 12 enough?

Monks Embrace Web to Reach Recruits

Esquire then:

(October 1958 issue)



Esquire now:

(Snapshot of website)

I used to enjoy Esquire in the 80's/early 90's. I remember they even once had an interesting story on Sam Beckett's last days. Something tells me there not doing so much Beckett these days....

I used to subscribe to Esquire. True story.

Things were different, back in the old days....

Actually, "the decline of magazines" as a news story has been overshadowed by "the death of newspapers", but it's just as real.

Not to say I didn't enjoy the "Women We Love" issues. For the accompanying essay, of course.

Remember the one with Monica Bellucci covered (on the cover) with caviar? And honey and sardines in the inner pages? Good times, good times.

#8

Exactly, and it's been going on for a long time. How many great writers did Mademoiselle launch, for instance? Or Red Book? Things incomprehensible today.

I'm quoting, I'm quoting!

I like it when commercial photography quotes from art history:





(Perugino's St. Sebastian, in the Louvre - the source could have been different, as there are many St. Sebastian paintings, but this seems like a close match. There's also the one by Rubens in Berlin's Staatliche Museum:)



I also particularly like this one of Angelina Jolie, but I don't know whether an explicit reference is being made, and what to:



Maybe just Marilyn?





Marilyn Monroe was certainly channeled for Lindsay Lohan:

Ooooh, but isn't Lindsay more delish when she's channelling Ann Margaret?

Ah, she's not an actress I paid much attention to, but now that you mention it, some pictures reveal a close resemblance (or so I think, not spending a lot of time looking at Lindsay Lohan):

Blecch, Lindsay Lohan. Blecch and triple blecch!

Now Ann-Margret was a hottie.

Blecch, Lindsay Lohan. Blecch and triple blecch!

I couldn't agree more, more or more.

Now Ann-Margret was a hottie.

Plus she could dance. (I don't think I want to see LL dance).

"I am Parson Homo and this is my pied-à-terre. We professional criminals must have somewhere to go when we are not in prison, you know."

The voice was that of an educated man, its modulation, the confidence and the perfect poise of the speaker suggested the college man.

Edgar Wallace, The Green Rust, 1919

British Parakeet Boom Is a Mystery, and a Mess

Monster rats as big as cats kill & eat babies in separate attacks in South Africa

Ukrainian Muslim Katya Koren, 19, stoned to death for taking part in beauty contest

An unlikely friendship between Jacob the Great Dane & Camilla the Chihuahua

Dedicated lovingly to my pal E., Torontophobe extraordinaire:

'But Toronto—Toronto is the subject. One must say something—what must one say about Toronto? What can one? It is impossible to give it anything but commendation. It is not squalid like Birmingham, or cramped like Canton or scattered like Edmonton, or sham like Berlin, or hellish like New York, or tiresome like Nice. It is all right. The only depressing thing is that it will always be what it is, only larger, and that no Canadian city can ever be anything better or different. If they are good they may become Toronto.'

Rupert Brooke, Letters from America, (dating from 1913, published 1916, posthumously)

Wow, my first impressions of Toronto were back in the '60s, when it seemed like a sleepier yet more eccentric version of Buffalo. Extrapolating that impression backward to Brooke's 1913 Hogtown induces catatonia. (Wait: how is it even possible to be a Torontophobe?)

Here's something for both of you:

Let's All Hate Toronto

(Wiki page)

Lol@catatonia--yeah, one rarely comes across so much damning from such faint praise.

I was going to go to that docu, and didn't! I'm afraid my feelings about Toronto remain steadfastly on the side of warmish tea. I can't passionately love it (there have been others before it...), but I certainly don't hate it. If there is widespread animosity towards Toronto from the rest of Canada (it is the sort of thing one sees in idle glossy media, never know how much is true), I've no clue the why and wherefore.

I've heard that it is too American, too businessy, too expensive, too coldhearted etc. Which makes me really wonder about the Canadian elsewhere: what is it, Barbados?

Maybe there are things about me that nobody has thought to ask! I'll surprise them by playing this dulcimer again...

--overheard on the radio

Oh, God! Not the hammered dulcimer!!

I'm sure HER dulcimer don't drink.

'What was it? Was it mental laziness, thoughtlessness combined with a Micawberish hope that "something would turn up", or was it a hopeless perplexity at life's perennial tendency to place one, day in, day out, at major or minor crossroads? Now that so many years have passed, and one can at last discern all the roads and little pathways radiating out from that dim, distant and forgotten crossroads, there emerges a strange and semi-intelligible pattern, one which no one in those far-off days could have guessed. {...} But what seemed simple and obvious at the time is now suddenly seen from a new angle of vision; we see the bone-structure of our deeds, their skeletal pattern--and it is a pattern of fear.'

Yuri Trifonov, The House on the Embankment

"You're an irreligious and immoral man. Why won't you behave like one?"

-- from the World War II-era espionage thriller Memo to a Firing Squad by Frederick Hazlitt Brennan

First the insult, then the injury.

Bear mauls drunk man after eating his barbecue

Never eat a bear's barbecue.

One of the unpopular opinions I hold is that Scott Fitzgerald was a giant idiot. I mean literally stupid, bimboesque. Apologies to the fans--it's me, not you.

The dumbest book of Fitzgerald's I've read (of three) is Tender is the night. I don't think about it often, in fact I hardly ever think about it at all. But someone just quoted from it...

“Dick Diver looked at her with cold blue eyes; his kind, strong mouth said thoughtfully and deliberately: "You’re the only girl I’ve seen for a long time that actually did look like something blooming.”

*Lola's in stitches*

DICK DIVER

"COLD BLUE EYES" "KIND, STRONG MOUTH"

KIND STRONG MOUTH SAID THOUGHTFULLY AND DELIBERATELY

*falls off chair*

I really can't envision a kind, strong mouth. More luck with a kind, strong moth.

can I have some of that, Lola?

Murrmurr of my heart! Just crack open any old F. Scott. The Crack-up is good for cracking up too.