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MH2
climber
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Feb 17, 2009 - 03:57pm PT
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high marks for Pynchon reference
In honor of pip, a digression. Can you cite the climbing reference in Vineland?
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pip the dog
Mountain climber
the outer bitterroots
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 17, 2009 - 10:09pm PT
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perswig,
i don't think it is so much reading "Lot 49" that defines you as a lunatic. most colleges and many high schools do define it as required reading. it is rather the fact that i loved it so much that defines me as a lunatic.
i love the moment in 'Lot 49' in which it suddenly dawns on Oedipa Maas that her husband Mucho has been taking LSD regularly and for rather a long time. (she asks him and he says 'well, yes, now that you ask').
reminds me of that great moment in Stangelove when Leftanant Mandrake says "Listen, Sergeant uh, (looks at his name tag) uh, BatGuano -- if that really is your name -- I order you shoot that Coke Machine!" Mandrake alone seems to recognize that everyone is not only a lunatic but also has an impossible name. so too Oedipa.
i sometimes feel like Oedipa or Mandrake... but far more often i'm quite certain i'm just another of the many lunatics plaguing them.
perhaps Mucho Maas would be a better handle for me, for as i understand it, it translates to something like "much too much." seems to fit that part of me, my cartoon alter ego, that i let loose to post here.
so while i appreciate your positve comments, perswig, well, give it time. the outstanding irish grandfather who (largely) raised me at times referred to me as "The Brill Cream Kid" -- the point being the famous slogan of what was in the '50s the hair goop of choice: "A Little Dab'll Do Ya" as always, he was a sly guy. and right.
in the unlikely event that you haven't yet watched Dr. Stangelove, drop everything and do it immediately. an essential guide to the western world. i can't imagine how anyone could make it through a day, let alone an expedition, without it forever in mind.
give me any swivel office chair and i do a rather excellent Stangelove (if i dare say). got that stressed nasal voice wired (much practice). kinda like a german Kermit The Frog with a fudgecicle suddenly up his ass. "ACK, MEIN FUHRER, I CAN VALK!"
^,,^
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Russ Walling
Social climber
Upper Fupa, North Dakota
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Feb 17, 2009 - 10:16pm PT
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Strangelove has to some degree, made me what I am today.
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pip the dog
Mountain climber
the outer bitterroots
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 17, 2009 - 10:38pm PT
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Rookjax,
i see and understand your point. thanksfor the heads up.
MH2,
i did read 'Vineland' when it first came out ('90-ish?) but never quite connected with it as i did with "Gravity's Rainbow" -- a copy of which i often have by my doggie bed. i love going back to it, but can only do say 10 or so pages at a time. it is great, but oh so dense. like being left on a deserted island with 500 tons of fudge. it's hard to eat nothing but something so dense as fudge. soon you want something like a salad or some chips. something not so dense.
but 10 pages a day of 'GR' is great. all things in moderation (including moderation). i love the part about the Masi used as a response to the americans use of Navajo native speakers as uncrackable carriers of essential info on the front. pynchon writes that the Masi, if caught and jailed would just stop eating and die. pynchon says (i've often wanted to check out the actual history of this) that the Masi only believe in right now; that tommorrow or yesterday have no real validity. as such, when put in a grim cell, that was in their mindset their forever, and with that they choose "out of here." dogs can understand this. dogs too live in (as i heard a sly guy mention on PBS the other night) in the Now Now Now. amen.
'GR' forever brings to mind another work of genius -- "Tristram Shandy". remarkable how those two books focus on the same thing (well, as i understand them), bipeds endless attempts to find the 'reason' behind the chaos they see. be it trying to figure out why the V2 rocket landed just 'there', or why you ended up with a name that doomed you. i also love Uncle Toby (in 'TS' -- the guy who got his leg blown off by a random cannonball and then devoted the rest of his life to studying projectiles and geometry to figure out precisely why he hurt so bad).
remarkable that 'TS' was published in 1759, perhaps only the second novel in english. remarkable also, that it took over 200 years before the english language novel again was ready to re-visit the subject.
~~~
i was kinda hoping (perhaps) that i might drop you in sheer verbiage. if not, the answer is no, just off the top of my head i can't quick recall a climbing reference in "Vineland."
though i am, as always, rather interested in learning something. so do tell (if you survived all of the prattle).
all good things to the lot of you,
^,,^
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pip the dog
Mountain climber
the outer bitterroots
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 17, 2009 - 11:01pm PT
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Russ,
General Jack D. Ripper (in your photo) ROCKS! the fact that he has surely lost his mind means little to the likes of me.
i especially like the moment in the film when Mandrake asks him "So, uh, Jack when exactly did you go... er, well, devolop this theory?"
and the mighty Jack responds: "Well, Mandrake, it was after the physical act of love. A sudden feeling of fatigue overcame me. Fortunately, I was able to interpret this correctly - a loss of essence..." (flouridation, that damned commie plot)
whoever wrote that moment deserves a nobel prize and a billion dollars (american!) a year. or so says i.
me, as i understand the film (now on like my 63 viewing), Mandrake gets oh so close to saying "when exactly did you go -- absolutly INSANE" but, recognizes who is talking to and veers quickly off into "well, develop this theory?"
that and the mighty Jack D.'s response is perhaps the best line in a film bulging with best lines: "...fortunately, i was able to interpret this correctly..." ((loss of essence, OPE, flouridation, et al)
simply priceless. your faithful dog says many and recurring MacArthur Genius awards (along with that cash) for the lot of them still among us.
GENIUS!
um, well, on this topic i will forever hyperventilate.
^,,^
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Russ Walling
Social climber
Upper Fupa, North Dakota
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Feb 17, 2009 - 11:07pm PT
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After all, as he tells Mandrake, he does not avoid women.... but he does deny them his essence.
BRILLIANT!!!!! I've only seen it about 46 times. More to come, I'm sure.
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MH2
climber
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Feb 17, 2009 - 11:19pm PT
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and in honor of the dog
I agree that GR is much more interesting, though it has a cold heart, as Phillip Morrison said in his review in Scientific American.
I like Mason & Dixon for its subject matter and because right at the very end a real human emotion flares into life.
I'll get around to the sentence from Vineland, if it becomes necessary, but at the time I read it I was struck yet again by the uncanny sense that Pynchon seems to have for the insides of what he writes about.
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BooYah
Social climber
Ruby Range
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Feb 17, 2009 - 11:21pm PT
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RokJox, in my humble estimation, is something of a wanker, and as such, should be viewed with a grain of salt.
Have a nice day.
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Jaybro
Social climber
wuz real!
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Feb 17, 2009 - 11:23pm PT
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Well Russ, you do have the big board, but are you really hording your fluids?
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Feb 17, 2009 - 11:28pm PT
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Before Gravity's Rainbow or The Crying of Lot 49 there was (for me at least) V,
which first persuaded me that Pynchon must be read. After Vineland that belief
faded, and I can recall hardly any details such as Pip mentions above, except GR's
breathtaking first line
A screaming comes across the sky
which seemed as evocative as
Call me Ishmael
or maybe later
The sky above the port was the color of a television, tuned to a dead channel
But one fragment from GR did strike me so that I remembered it for years, eventually
looked up the backstory and used it for much different purposes in a book of my own.
So when Pip writes,
bipeds endless attempts to find the 'reason' behind the chaos they see. be it trying to
figure out why the V2 rocket landed just 'there',
I want to interject that it's not quite a fiction, the real person who did this was an English
actuary named R.D. Clarke, his analysis concerned the V1 flying bomb and not the V2,
and he really did demonstrate that there was order of a sort, the Poisson distribution,
behind the apparent chaos of the Blitz.
And what Pynchon had done seemed all the more clever then: used the Poisson
distribution as a metaphor.
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pip the dog
Mountain climber
the outer bitterroots
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 17, 2009 - 11:41pm PT
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Russ,
re:
> Strangelove has to some degree, made me what I am today.
i don't doubt it for a minute. REAL MEN are ready to define the problem, then if need be send in an air wing of nukes.
though i'd rather prefer anyone avoid the nukes, i do truly admire all of the rest of it. the real man i hope to be figures out the problem then calls in the artillery requred. i have friends/mentors who do this. perhaps someday even me...
so russ, you got a 50cal machine gun in your golf bag? if so, you are even more the man!
as for the film, i once got caught in a snow cave (more like a snow hole) with a pal on a face out, well, in the middle of nowhere. and what i then thought was the mother of all storms howled in (i've sinced been 'tutored' by mother nature that there is in fact worse).
we spent fookin' days in that hole (did i mention that my pathology includes claustriphobia?) as the food and then the fuel ran out. yet mother nature seemed well supplied with more ammo to hammer us. i was going even more nuts.
digression warning! [as an aside, my pal and i had 'packed light' for what we hoped would be a quick summit shot. one bivy bag and one sleeping bag between us. 3 days in that hole in a tiny bag with this 2X4 stud of a guy is when i realized i wasn't gay (as much as i didn't much care). i ended up truly bruised from days of this ripped plank of a guy hammering on me, every time he squirmed he seemed to all but break something in me. that and i'm like going nuts and forever shoving the shaft of my axe through the 'doorway' to get more air. eventually (a given as i am here to tell the tale) mother nature relented and it got actually pretty outside. we exited and had a long 2 Stooges slap fest of "you as#@&%e" just outside. then we rapped off of that (just then) monster. sheesh.]
digression ends. all clear.
the one thing we did do to maintain our sanity was walk through the entire script of 'Strangelove' at least 4x, maybe more. for he knew it as well as i. we just kept picking up the next character -- as we beat each other up in that tiny bag.
yes, surely a film that is essential prep for anyone preparing to do anything, er, stupid.
^,,^
EDIT cool, used that edit key to fix a typo that would render it unreadable. the rest of the typos i am fine with.
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Russ Walling
Social climber
Upper Fupa, North Dakota
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Feb 17, 2009 - 11:58pm PT
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...and you said feed me, ...and I was feeing you Jack!
"the string.... in my leg......"
"pree-versions"
hahahaha!
DAMN THAT MOVIE IS GUD!!!!!!!!!!!1111
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pip the dog
Mountain climber
the outer bitterroots
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 18, 2009 - 12:09am PT
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Rockjox,
i've been whining for the last week on what is left of the .wreck about this brutal chest cold, flu, whatever (i call it the plague) i've had for almost 10 days. picked it up in one of those flying petri dishes they call airliners.
and i have been _such_ a whining infant on this front. you know, i learned (from too much experience) how to distance 'me' from the 'remote' pains like broken limbs (i have much practice, dhope!). but when it comes to a week of like coughing up tennis balls, notable fever, and this brain dead feeling like someone had just chopped 40 points of of my IQ (leaving me with a net of what? 32)
well, i just collapsed into being a whining toddler. and this in some no-tel in yet another nameless megapolis. arghhh. my sweatheart, of course, simply hung up on me when i started whining. so i just posted it on the .wreck.
well, be well. and for what it is worth, i found that 160,000 words of whining didn't me any feel better. OTOH, when i finally got with the program and saw an MD on like day 6 -- i ended up with this Rx cough syrup to die for. i soon came to understand why some souls are reduced to like car-jackings and the like to pay for the next dose of whatever. i'm _really_ liking this stuff -- all of the walt disney audio-visuals in the dark are especially cool.
fwiw,
^,,^
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pip the dog
Mountain climber
the outer bitterroots
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 18, 2009 - 12:22am PT
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Russ,
re:
> "the string.... in my leg......"
"has gone all gammy, Jack" (therefore i am at present unable to help you fire a machine gun at our own troops...)
dude, we're like having this telepathic mind-meld here... dude -- and like i thought there were some truly weird things in my head.
perhaps we're both on the same Rx cough syrup at present (this stuff makes even the mexican opiate brown stuff sold in the alleyways of my 'ute seem flyweight).
sheesh. pull my string on this and i will shut down Al Gore's internet with a pig that even that python can't swallow. as noted above, i've spent days dazed, scared, and dehydrated practicing all the lines of that mighty film.
"MR, PRESIDENT, WE MUST PREVENT THE MINE SHAFT GAP!"
^,,^
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Mimi
climber
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Feb 18, 2009 - 12:29am PT
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Settle down, nah!
Take a breather pip. You must do standup.
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pip the dog
Mountain climber
the outer bitterroots
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 18, 2009 - 12:39am PT
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Chiloe,
i share your tastes for great opening lines. to my eye, this makes you obviously a genius. you, you might want to take this as a heads up to seek out professional counseling.
i've always liked
EDIT (here memory didn't serve)
"And it came to pass, after the year was expired, at the time when kings go forth to battle, that David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel; and they destroyed the children of Ammon, and besieged Rabbah. But David tarried still at Jerusalem." II Samuel
surely one of the great narratives and opening lines of the western canon. in that one sentance, you know that the poop is surely going to hit the prop. but who among us could anticipate how much poop the genius who wrote that had in mind. i am by chance not a theist, but the KJV is also regular bedside fodder.
~~~
i found your references to the actual V1 (not V2) history fascinating. that too i have long planned to look into. news of R.D. Clarke and the fact he was actually an actuary makes these even more compelling, especially re: 'Gravity's Rainbow'
thank you for the insight,
^,,^
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pip the dog
Mountain climber
the outer bitterroots
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 18, 2009 - 02:10am PT
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Mimi,
re:
> Settle down, nah!
> Take a breather pip. You must do standup.
good advice. yup, breathing into that brown paper bag now. om mani padri om... counting backwards from 10... damn, i need another paper bag.
it is all Russ' fault -- he mentioned Strangelove, even posted a picture of Jack(!) little wonder i'm chasing my tail around in ever smaller circles and getting all funny in the head, like.
~~~
as for your question re: standup (the proper term is schtick) um, i fear this might prove a rather long one. those with day jobs might want to jump ship now...
[Warning, Massive Post Likely To Follow]
ok, fwiw, decades ago, and on what seems another planet far far from here, i did do some schtick. back when i was at the university of stupidly expensive.
i spent a summer in manhattan (boy was i stupid for thinking i could actually save enough money there). i lived in this teeny studio with the other 8 of us, all swapping mattresses on the floor still hot and sweaty from the occupant as if on a WWII sub. my personal bunkee was this huge guy i remember only as "Goin Jim".
for at dawn when i slithered home in hopes of my max 4 hours of sleep before the nightmare started again, i would always find him heading out the door say "Goin Jim". i suspect what he was saying was "Going To The Gym" -- which makes sense as he (then) looked like a young Schwarzenegger. he was way ripped, but not especially a master of the english language. brooklyn, i think.
i had, then, two 40 hr/wk jobs, one on top of the other -- both at the same place, a then rather notable comedy club that pulled in some of the best talent of the era. by day i washed dishes, by night i cooked the fair they sold to drunks. to this day i am always suspicious of anyone who claims to be working 80 hr/wk for more than a couple weeks or so. for, in my experience, after 4 or 5 weeks of this no one can actually speak english or drive a car. but then, i am not the reference of all things.
so there was this guy, jake johannsen, who was early in his career and genuinely funny. he once came back into the kitchen during the drunk feeding hours scavenging for food. as i recognized him from the stage (he cracked even exhausted me up) so i let him go at whatever he wanted. we talked a bit.
soon after, the owner of this venue, who we will call "Irv Goldberg" (not his actual name, but close enough) a long (long) time veteran of the catskills circuit, comes to me and says i want you to open for johannsen. this like on a tuesday night when the place was pretty much empty. i later learned that johannsen had found me almost funny and suggested it.
irv offered me like 60 bucks for 20 minutes. which was, at my then minimum wage, real money. so i said sure. i went up and told some actually true story about nuns beating me to death at the catholic reform school i actually ended up in. the many sadists in attendance ate this up. to this day i wonder about people, for if my schtick of the night was failing (it often did) i would just go back to some true tale of getting the crap beat out of me -- and how when i went home with a bloody nose my parents (both rather gentle, but very catholic) would re-beat the crap out of me for having dared piss a nun off such that she had to beat the crap out of me.
the nuns and surely my parents i have found my peace with. the tuesday night sadists i still wonder about.
so this goes on a month or so and irv gives me a raise to like $80 for 20 minutes and i'm thinking 'ooh, this is great, this is the big money'
on the weekends, this venue got the big names in. robin williams, jay leno, that kind of serious stuff (saw them both, the former made me literally wet myself, the latter is way smart and kind of a human joke database supercomputer. the former never does the same gig twice, what people paid for as a show was for him, i remain certain, just another attempt at a self-exorcism. the latter was bombproof reliable, but never to my eye especially inspired.)
so this one saturday night irv comes back into the kitchen and in the middle of me doing 30 or so drunk burgers and a couple of fried eggs on the same grill (damn irv for leaving the fried eggs on his drunk menu, pain in the ass) and tells me that the guy who was supposed to open for johannsen - who was himself opening for williams, has not shown up. so he'll give me $100 bucks to do 20 minutes.
so off i go. and i am trying to wake up from then 10 hours of hot hot hot kitchen. and i've got like 5 minutes to dream something up.
now back in the day, every schtickster was expected to do an impersonation. only i really sucked at those (though i still stand behind my Dr Merkwürdigeliebe impersonation). the best i could do was come up with a setup so insane no one paid attention to my lame attempts at impersonations. stuff like "elvis on a fishhook" or "carol channing and sid vicious singing 'I Love NY In Spring' yeah, lame.
but i had this joke i thought would really flay them, about the then VP George Bush, um, George the First. but i'm backstage wandering around trying to come up with a way of doing a remotely recognizable impersonation of the guy. and this is going nowhere.
the ever generous johannsen jumps in, hears of my plight, and tries to teach me how to do it. with minutes to go, i still suck.
then suddenly i hear this voice i surely recognized just behind me, and suddenly williams is right there trying to help me get this if not right then perhaps in the ballpark.
he says "now of course all male impersonations start with The Duke, right" and i say "right" and do my best john wayne saying "Qu'est qui vous voudrais, pilgrim..." (sp?). and he says "well, good enough. now the shift from that to reagan is easy, right?" so i do my best reagan and say "whell, i once had a dog named Deficit, and we ignored him, and eventually he went away."
i am of course still pretty star struck, but as i have like two minutes to come up with something, it saves me from a complete meltdown before such talent. then williams says "ok, take reagan and stick a fudgecicle up your a*s. viola! dead on george bush (senior, the only bush then on the radar). i try this and it almost kinda works. it certainly seemed to work in the company of johannsen and williams both getting it dead on as part of the chorus.
(with this i get to give proper attribution for my Kermit The Frog with a fudgecicle up his ass ref in an earlier post)
now as we three are all strutting around going "Weeeeel, Weeeel) none of us notice that irv his own massive self is at the mic introducing me. like 3 or 4 times (i was later told) and wondering where the fook i was. and like, increasing displeased.
during my rather brief schtick career i went under the stage name of... yeah, you guessed it, dogboy. so there is the ederly Irv saying in a bronx/catskill vaudeville circuit/heavy yiddish accent "the immminnnetable dhog-bahoy..." (i still have no idea what the first part meant) and all the while me unaware as i was still trying to imagine having a fudgecicle up my ass.
suddenly, the stage manager grabs me and literally throws me onto the stage. the lights are blinding. and there are oh so many people. in that moment i forgot even what little i had planned to do. i was stunned like a deer in the headlights.
eventually i walk to the mic, and for reasons i myself will never comprehend, i pull it off the stand and stick it down my pants and call it the 'dick-o-phone'. and i start interviewing my own schlong. "so, what exactly were you thinking when you convinced me to do X" and so on.
next thing i know, williams was kneeling before me, laughing and talking to my crotch (and the mic therein). he starts interviewing my schlong. and his stuff, is of course, way funnier than mine. me, it is everything i can do to just stand there and not wet myself with laughter (and in that moment, electrocute myself. i actually breathed long enough to worry about this likely outcome).
after 20 or so minutes of this and various, we schlep off to much applause. johannsen then goes out and slays them. williams follows and leaves them struggling for breath they were laughing so hard.
and so i am saved by genuine big kids. one a huge kid. bless them. the down side is that irv calls me to his "orifice" and reads me the riot act. he reminds me that he, irv goldberg, offers only "quality family entertainment" -- and that cursing and the like is not what irv goldberg offers. i remind him that i had, in fact, never cursed (didn't mention that the lit up williams made even my ears singe). but irv was enraged by the mic down the pants gig, the 'dick-o-phone'.
and with that he assured me that not only would i never appear on his stage again, he would personally see to it that i never worked "on the entire east coast, even florida" again. and he remained true to his word -- at least as far as his stage went. though he did allow me my 80 hrs/wk washing dishes and cooking for drunks for what was left of that summer. which i did. sheesh, thanks 'irv'.
i did do some more schtick, at various venues somewhere close to the new haven/nyc line. but once i was no longer so desperate for cash i gave it up. i suspected that with much work i could eventually get ok, maybe even fairly good at it. but in the romanticism of my then youth i up and decided that i didn't want to commit myself to anything i couldn't hope to possibly be the best at. having witnessed johannsen and williams and other true talents at close range, i realized that i just wasn't wired to be that good.
i'm glad i didn't apply the same standard to climbing, or i would have lost out on the joy of my life.
ok, enough already. gawd this one is huge.
well, Mimi did ask...
all good things,
^,,^
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Russ Walling
Social climber
Upper Fupa, North Dakota
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Feb 18, 2009 - 02:16am PT
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".....you can't fight in here......! This is the war room!"
".....breed more prodigiously than we do"
"...they must be of a highly stimulating nature"
".... there will be much time.... and little to do"
".....I'm not saying we won't get our hair mussed"
Peace is our Profession
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pip the dog
Mountain climber
the outer bitterroots
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 18, 2009 - 02:32am PT
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Russ,
the last of your choice quotes from Strangelove is especially useful on any climb of consequence
> ".....I'm not saying we won't get our hair mussed"
i've allowed friends to talk me into all manner of stupidity with that one. usually ended up with my hair rather massively 'mussed'
^,,^
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MH2
climber
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Feb 18, 2009 - 04:41am PT
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From one point of view the Poisson distribution has no memory, an anthropomorphism Pynchon may have had in mind.
Byron probably derives also from the statistics of light bulb lifetimes, which has a very long tail on the geriatric end.
CBC Radio did a piece just recently on Britain's search to beat out the Livermore bulb.
After all it was a British scientist and inventor who first demonstrated a working light bulb, at a Literary and Philosophical Society lecture in Newcastle upon Tyne, on 3 February 1879.
Didn't know until then that there is a 107+ year-old bulb.
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