Enrico Donati

Enrico Donati, 98 years old, is the last of the original surrealists. He is still working and exhibiting.

(1930) That same year, Donati and Duchamp prepared a window display at Manhattan's Brentano's bookstore to celebrate the publication of their friend Breton's book "Le Surrealisme et la Peinture." In homage to a work by Rene Magritte, Donati painted toes on a pair of shoes and those were added to a headless mannequin that Duchamp brought. They put the book in its hands, and set it up next to a running faucet. Not an hour went by before members of the Salvation Army rushed into the store to warn store owner Arthur Brentano Jr. that he was risking damnation for the blasphemy of a headless man reading a book. Donati chuckles at the memory.

"(Brentano) told us, 'Get out with all this stuff.' So we took it around the corner to the Gotham Book Mart. We installed it there, and it stayed there until the end of the month.

"Surrealism was done by instinct, and you were looking at an object not with the eye, but behind the eye. You had the feeling of something extraordinary, but you didn't see it, but you had the feeling of it. So you put the feeling on canvas, and it became Surrealism. It was automatism, in which you do it by a succession of thought. One thing brought you to another thing, then another thing. At the end of it, it was something else, something new that you never saw with your eye, but you felt it. You felt it, and it came out because it was something that was in you, and that's very Surrealist.

"That's all."

A screenplay in the making

A friend, who's in the film industry, suggested that my tragi-comic misadventures this past year are a screenplay in the making. Coincidentally, and like Paul Auster I do believe in coincidences, and also in telepathy, I thought of something similar a day or two earlier. Let's see. I don't know who could play me (Mike Myers? Roger Moore?), but as far as the lead female role, what's the name of the actress who played Nurse Ratchet in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest?

Actually, I was thinking more of a book, a fictional account. Fiction writers have been known to exact revenge on their former spouses and lovers by fictionalizing their personas into unpleasant characters in their books. Most readers never suspect, but those who need to know, do know. However, I'm afraid that it would take a better poison pen (keyboard?) than mine to describe the bizarre things I have experienced, the promises and betrayals, the poetry written, chocolates consumed, the trials without a jury, the cold bureaucracies, and the heavenly taste of the sweet banana bread that she baked me in February. Or was it in January?

It's the stuff of country and western songs, too. She hated country music and thought that Bob Dylan was country (!) Now, that's a c&w song in the making. (There have been plenty of heartbreak songs, but to write another one and hope to sell it you've got to have a somewhat original angle. )

Anyway, I can't tell the complete story here, as I've been sworn to silence, except to tell you that it's a story of boy meets girl, girl accuses boy of an unspeakable crime that he didn't commit. More to be seen soon at a cinema near you. Or a bookstore. Or a country radiostation.

A moment of truth

The circus performance has finally started. It'll go on for exactly one year! Whoopee! Let me describe the first act.

A leading Presidential candidate and the entourage visited a diner in Iowa, ran up a $157.46 bill , paid it, and, according to the waitress who served them, whose name is Anita Esterday, left no tip. The next day the leading Presidential candidate used Anita's hard luck story (she has to work two jobs to support her family) in a speech elsewhere. All this was reported on the National Public Radio, a government supported organization that is not supposed to endorse any candidates, but, despite everything, is clearly endorsing this very leading Presidential candidate.

The leading Presidential candidate's damage control team went to work. It first claimed that it had left a $100 cash tip to the manger, who, it later turned out, was not present there, and then a day or two later, a local representative of the leading Presidential candidate, who as all know is for the "little people" went to the diner to hand Anita $20. That would come out to about 12.7 % of the bill, whereas in the United States the standard tipping percentage is 15 to 20%.

Well, the Internet went to work. It's buzzing and buzzing and the opposition is having a field day with this incident. Who can blame them! For the "little people"? Indeed. The true character of the candidate and the supporters is now on full display. It's the little things that count. What is usually called a moment of truth. Now songs are being written, I kid you not. The waitress' name lends itself to the task. Here is a fragment of a full song written just Yesterday:

Esterday...It's a game that you don't want to play
In the end, you know I'll get my way
I'm warning you Ms. Esterday

You got stiffed by me but you should have held your tongue
Those who dare cross me find their lives are soon undone...yes, really

And so on, until the next November!

Another language lesson

There is an Internet forum I often visit. It is not a joke forum, or a linguistics forum, but a political, slash cultural forum. I caught an interesting exchange on it the other day, and here are some excerpts, starting with the initial post. I guarantee you'll learn something today.

Initial post:

I'm an engineer and yes...I use a lot of duct tape but after 35 years of marriage my wife still translates items she can't put a name to as a "thingy". I've let this pass with a smile but have wondered how many people actually use this word (if it is a word) during everyday conversation...

Interesting responses (some shortened):

• Same as a whatchamacallit, but different than a whatsits.....
• Halfway between a gizmo and a doodad.
• is that the same as a thing-a-ma-jig ?
• It is a basic version of a dohickey
• In Monty Python sketches it is a euphemism for “sexual congress.”
• Its like a peepee only smaller.
• Technical NOTE: 2 thingys together make a “KLUGE”...............
• if something involves a person who’d name escapes me, they become a Hoozit.
• I think it is the same as a doomawhatchit.
• It’s a small hoohah, but not as complex as a widget.
• A Thingy is the opposite of a Dinghy!
• thingy is short for thingamabob or thingamajig.
• A comosigiama.
• I often use "Chingaletta", which a Mexican forman I used to work for would use to call anything he couldn't name at the time. It wasn't until about 6 years ago when I found out the true meaning of "chingaletta" It means "F#$%ing thing". Usage: "Hand me that chingaletta over there"
• A “thingy” is a “shmingy.”
• It depends ... a thingy can also be a gozinta or a gozouta, depending on its orientation.
• ”dooflatchey” is also acceptable.....”
• Isn’t dooflatchey the socially unacceptable passing of unknown gases?
• Same as the “deal”.
• “Thingy”......you know.... it’s the same as a somethin-or-other.
• It’s the opposite of unthingy.
• As long as you remain the gazinta, you needn’t worry about the thingy.
• In German it’s Dingsdabums.
• It’s a dunsel.
• In my little corner of the Air Force, "thingies" don't exist. However, "whatsits" and "how ya doins" are in abundance: "Hey there, Hero. Give me that whatsit over there by the how ya doin." That sentence wouldn't confuse me at all.
• Thats called a phatch-a-motter. You use it with a bisco-fig-nut.
• Whatnot.....
• Thingy = 1 Whoozie-Whatzit however1 Thingy = 2.32 Hooky-Dookies. Hooky-Dookies are metric.
• No, thing-a-ma-jig is used to connect thing-a-ma-bobs...
• It’s an unspecified word, so when she can delay deciding the definition of that word. Wife: “Go fix the thingy”You : “Okay”.... a few hours later, Wife: “I thought I told you to fix the dripping faucet” You: “When you said thingy I thought you meant ice tray.” Wife: “No! I meant the faucet, now go do it!” Wife (thinking to self): “Men just don’t listen.”
• It’s usually next to the Doowangus
• Probably short form of “thingummy,” which is also a Britishism.
• I remember my first dinorkel.
• In my culture it's a fremmis.
• No one has mentioned bazooty. Originally, it mean just odd things found in food, like bad meatloaf. It has expanded to mean any kind of unknown, small object.
  
  
• Thingy, thingy, bo-bingy Banana fana fo fingy Fee fi fo fingy. Thingy.

• Actually, a thingy is ganip of the ganap variety. I thought everyone knew that.
• It’s the same as a whatsamagigger.

And so on, you know, more thingies like that...

Natan Sharansky

A true modern age hero, a man who has lived a life of a Count of Monte Cristo's. Here's a link to an interview with him in the Saturday Wall Street Journal. Some favorite quotes from it:

An anecdote or joke is never absent for long in conversation. As almost any East European will tell you, humor makes unpleasant reality go down easier.

[T]he West confuses the ballot box with democracy. "The election has to be at the end of the process of building free society," he says. "If there is no free and democratic society, elections can never be free and democratic."

"Democracy is a rather problematic word, because democracy is about technique. I would prefer freedom. I would say people don't want to live under constant fear."

Mr. Sharansky's stubbornness is famous. During his 1986 release, in exchange for a couple Soviet spies, the KGB told him to walk straight across Glienicke Bridge. He zigzagged. This account, he tells me, is partly apocryphal. That happened earlier, at the airport in East Berlin, when he meandered from the plane to a waiting car. There is a funny but less well-known story about the bridge. Mr. Sharansky was dressed in civilian clothes bought for him in Moscow, which were too big. The KGB didn't let him have a belt for his baggy pants, and he was forced to hold them up with a rope. "When I was on the bridge and I asked the U.S. \[official\]"--who was guiding him across--"'Where is the border?' At this line, he pointed. 'Oh freedom!' and I jumped over. The rope broke. At the last moment, I caught my pants.

"Then they asked me, 'What was your first thought when you came to freedom?' 'How not to lose my trousers!'"

And he laughs.

Clarence Thomas

Here is a link to an interview with a man I greatly admire Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice, United States Supreme Court.