by EditorM

Here’s a chance

Tom the Dancing Bug 1654 sfpc163 literary history

CIDU: Here’s a chance for some early-riser readers to explain for others the allusions to a certain (probably false!) famous Hemingway anecdote.

LOL: But also, all can just enjoy these (somewhat sour!) joke mini-strips.

18 Comments

  4. From that Wikipedia article:
    This connection to Hemingway was reinforced by a one-man play called Papa by John deGroot, which debuted in 1996.

    This John deGroot must have been a collateral ancestor of Luann De Groot.

  5. Even if Hemingway did not originate the story, the anecdote might be true. He would hardly have been the first or last person to recycle an old tale to make a point, or win a bet.

  6. I see several nice, terse category names, and then “THERE ARE JUST A COUPLE POP CULTURE REFERENCES YOU WILL NEED TO UNDERSTAND THIS
    RUBEN BOLLING.” That reminds me of when the local theater group was performing A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and I wrote a news feature about long titles. This was back in hot-type days, and we cut the headline off in nid-letter. Picture “Some Plays Have Really Long Na” with half of the terminal “a” missing.

    BTW, welcome back, “ootenaboot”.

  7. If you saw the movie “FRANCIS HA” you found out [spoiler I guess] that the form in the title is not about the exclamation “Ha!” but a matter of a longer name not fitting on a mailbox label.

    I remember a sort of trend in the 60s or 70s of very long titles for stage plays. Probably the champ – for length of title and for critical esteem and audience popularity – was MARAT/SADE, as it was known for short. I’ll let someone else fill it in. But also part of this were OH DAD, POOR DAD, MAMA’S HUNG YOU IN THE CLOSET AND I’M FEELING SO SAD. And maybe also FOR COLORED GIRLS WHO HAVE CONSIDERED SUICIDE WHEN THE RAINBOW IS ENUF.

  8. Oh but however! The Ruben Bolling tag was the artist identification, not part of the verbose CIDU subcategorisation. Also, the all-caps printing is forced by the display specs of the Theme we have in use; but these categories and tags are in normal up-and-down style in most internal pages

  9. @ mitch – “…I’ll let someone else fill it in…”

    Sorry, not me. From Wikipedia: “…it is a depiction of class struggle and human suffering…”

    … the latter in particular as performed by the audience.

  10. Attempting from memory – so corrections quite expected!

    The persecution and assassination of Jean Paul Marat as enacted by the inmates of the Asylum at Charenton under the direction of the Marquis de Sade

  11. @ Dana (10) – That is very impressive. Not only is your version a perfectly good translation of the original German title (“Die Verfolgung und Ermordung Jean Paul Marats dargestellt durch die Schauspielgruppe des Hospizes zu Charenton unter Anleitung des Herrn de Sade“), it matches the text shown on the cover almost exactly:

    P.S. I think “inmates of the asylum” is rather pejorative in comparison to “Schauspielgruppe des Hospizes“, and would personally prefer “hospital theater group“, but nobody is likely to change it now.

  12. Back in the early days at Megacorp, the salaried people used a weekly timecard which was a computer punch card that you wrote one. It was punched with your employee number, and had your name written on the top. One guy I worked with had a long last name, and was a Junior as well, which they considered part of your last name. His first name was William. So his cards all read, “LONGLASTNAME JR. WILLIA”. That bothered him a lot.

  13. There’s an obscure book from 1968, back when a lot of companies had “tab machines” and pretended they were computers and everything was stored on punch cards. “The Man Whose Name Wouldn’t Fit, or The Case of Cartwright-Chickering.” https://www.amazon.com/Man-Whose-Name-Wouldnt-Cartwright-Chickering/dp/B0006BUEKE/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1876O9NTLBCZ0&keywords=The+Man+Whose+Name+Wouldn%27t+Fit&qid=1696109015&s=books&sprefix=the+man+whose+name+wouldn%27t+fit%2Cstripbooks%2C59&sr=1-1

  14. Back in the early days at Megacorp

    Most probably were able to figure out that it was me, but I interrupted myself while composing, came back and saw it hadn’t been submitted, but failed to notice that I hadn’t gone through the ID part.

  16. I used to have a punch card when I was working at local home goods department store in the jewelry department while in college (early 1970s) – but it never occurred to me that it might be read by a computer. I just figured that someone would go through the cards and figure out the payroll.

    I am guessing the idea that computer might be doing the payroll never occurred to me as I would add up payroll books for dad’s accounting clients from when I was around 12 or so.

  17. Back then, some names were too long to fit. Now some names are too short to fit.

    First name: Henry. Last name: Ng. ERROR! Last name must be at least 3 characters. [BTW how do you type a newline in this editor?]

  18. MiB I’m not sure what platform you’re on — but when I’m in Windows with a physical keyboard, I use Shift-Enter for newline.

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