by Roy Blount
12. An increasingly popular means of enhancing the fun of camping out is Portacoals, a carry-along low campfire (can be set to glow or smolder) in an eye-pleasing off-red Bakelite case. It is $69.50 at what East Side shop?
13. The man below has been sliding in the polls. Who is he, what is his job and whose idea was he in the first place? Name three good places within the bounds of New York City where the increasingly popular pastime of sliding in the polls may be enjoyed.
14. John Leonard was bemused in his garden, “growing tensions,” when he and Dmitri got each other in a sort of mutual hammerlock and had to be prized apart by a vaguely, multiply allusive remark. What was the remark? How would you have answered it? Would it have prized you and either Leonard or Dmitri apart?
15. President Carter said he plans to whip a portion of Sen. Edward Kennedy’s anatomy. Do you know what portion? If you do, if in fact you are aware that any hint of anatomy was involved, then you have been reading some other newspaper. Why? Don’t you like the new Science section? There was something fascinating in there about anatomy just last Tuesday. How did you like that? Didn’t you see it? Didn’t you even look at the graphs?
16. As a matter of fact, your name was on page A4, column 3, last week. We haven’t heard anything from you about it. Did you miss it? Why? Don’t you read the first section of the paper? That’s where the hard news is. Don’t you enjoy hard news? The Times has to have some hard news. Why do you read this quiz and don’t read the news? Do you read this quiz? Does anybody? Anybody who is upscale? Should we offer prizes?
Answers to Weekly News Quiz
Questions appear on pages 257-260.
1. The entire Asian landmass.
2. Coriander, minced.
3. A human heart. The transplant, made possible through the use of deductible corporate jets, two bright red fire engines and the combined efforts of Rhodesian and South Carolinian surgical and negotiating teams, did little to alleviate growing tensions.
4. Matisse.
5. Twice. Smallpox. A panel on coal.
6. Franz Josef Strauss was chosen as the opposition’s candidate for chancellor in the 1980 elections. The day before, he had been ejected for punching a referee during his team’s victory over the Virgin Islands. The referee had made a slighting reference to “The Blue Danube Waltz,” by Strauss.
7. Mr. Pol Pot.
8. In the first two cases the Court brought in decisions of ejectamus manus nostra, or “we throw up our hands.” In the third ruling, the Court upheld sweeping federal procedures for disclosure of news photographers’ wisecracks.
9. “The wartime equivalent of morals.”
10. Misses Capelius and Puhl.
11. Soft leathers, patent leathers, suede, snakeskin, and metallic vinyl, with covered buckles, and buckleless versions of stretchy elasticized fabrics. Reds, purples, hot pinks, and yellows.
12. Loss of U.S. aid over car fumes.
13. Near Kalgoorlie, Australia, because of cracks in the Backfire bomber’s underwing engine mounts, or pylons, which an emerging congressional consensus proposes to remedy by attachment of clarifying riders or “understandings” which could seriously increase U.S.–Soviet tensions in light of the 78-degree cooling limit in public buildings this summer.
14. If Mr. Brown is the engineer, and the engineer’s son is wearing yellow trousers, and the brakeman is not named Mr. White, then the fourth passenger from the left must be the one with the sandy beard, which makes Mr. Black the son of the uncle’s wife.
15. The rebel junta will not be recognized as such until it withdraws its demands.
16. Feet.
THAT DOG ISN’T FIFTEEN
“KEEP THE TV IN its place in the home. We don’t watch the TV constantly—we leave it on; you know how you’ll do. But you have to live your life.”
“That’s been our feeling.”
“Able to hold a conversation. You know.”
“You can’t just be rapt.”
“No. But Jim’s Mama—”
“That’s a new TV, Irene? Is the hue just right? What happened to your old TV?”
“This is what I’m telling you. Jim’s Mama—”
“With the walnut grain.”
“Had it four years. Never the first sign of trouble. Until Jim’s Mama—”
“Your hue is off, Irene. See, Orson Welles’s white wine is off.”
“Well …”
“Was it the old TV you said started having the little funny smell?”
“But that was later. See, Jim’s Mama would come over, and she’d watch the TV, and—like when that man comes home, in the artificial-cream commercial? The grown son, visiting his mother? He gets up so perky in the morning, Jim’s Mama would say. He acts so sweet—about his Mama fixing him a big old-fashioned breakfast just like he remembers but with artificial cream. All we do, Jim’s Mama would say, when she makes us breakfast, is sip a little coffee and act sour.”
“It’s a little fuzzy, too, isn’t it, Irene?”
“We’d say, Mama, that son on television—that’s television, that’s not life. We said, Mama, what they’re trying to do is sell you something. That’s all. And—”
“Trying to sell you that artificial cream.”
“Uh-huh. We’d say, Mama, in real life that man has probably been up for hours.”
“Maybe—I think I’d try the brightness knob, too, Irene.”
“And, but Jim’s Mama, another thing she’d say was, there was never a night around here when anybody would announce, ‘Tonight is kinda special.’ We’d say, Why, Mama, how about the other night when we had you and the Willetses over, wasn’t that kinda special? No, she’d say. She’d say, Our friends didn’t ever tell us, ‘You’re beautiful.’ Now, Mama, we’d say, Life just isn’t like that.”
“And the TV had the smell then?”
“That was later. We’d say, Mama, they’re just trying to sell you something. She’d say fine. Said she wanted to buy whatever it was. Said she liked buying things. Said that’s what America was built on.”
“It is hue, Irene. See her leg?”
“Yes, we’d say, Mama, but don’t you want to have a little something left to leave behind? She’d say no, she wanted to give us a big old-fashioned breakfast like we remembered it and see us acting perky. Wanted to get up and make us breakfast even with all the arthritis in her feet, like the grandmother in the what is it—the arthritis commercial, you know?”
“Pain commercial.”
“And when she did have us over and cooked, she’d serve something and we’d just barely bite into it—just get it hardly in our mouth good—and she’d say, You don’t like it? We’d say, Mama, we haven’t tasted it yet. She’d say, On TV they taste things immediately. And they light up, and say … We’d say, Mama, you don’t give us time.”
“See now, Robert Young is tanner than that.”
“Well, maybe he’s—”
“At her house would she watch much TV?”
“No. Really, you know, I think that was the trouble. She didn’t have her own TV. Maybe Robert Young is just getting old.”
“No, Irene, at our house he’s real tan.”
“We’d say, Mama, if you watched it all the time you’d realize. But she’d say no, no, she never had a TV when Jim’s Dad was alive. And she had her little motor scooter she’d scoot around on, and all her fish.”
“I believe you said she had beautiful fish.”
“She’d say people on TV look you right in the eye and smile. Said we were her closest family and we wouldn’t look her right in the eye and smile. We said, ‘Mama!’ She said we wouldn’t even look her right in the eye and frown. We said, ‘Mama!’”
No, see that rabbit. You know that rabbit is off.”
“People on TV are s’ bright-eyed, she’d say. Always s’ helpful-looking, s’ friendly. She’d say people on TV have a little chuckle that goes with things they say. A little ‘huh’ laugh before words, to show they’re thinking about how you
’ll react. And … Well, we’d just look at her and look at each other and shake our heads. But then it started happening.”
“The little smell?”
“That, and—”
“Was it a bad smell?”
“No. No. It—”
“Did it smell like it was burning?”
“No, it wasn’t a mechanical smell. … More like an aroma. Not an aroma. What’s the word I mean?”
“Bouquet?”
“No.”
“You know, Irene, too … your vertical hold. That black band on the bottom? You know how it’ll get? When it just eddddges up. And eddddges up?”
“But we’d look over, and Jim’s Mama would be on one side of the room, and the TV’d be turned that way. It’d—We’d look over, and the back of it would be to us. We didn’t move it. Jim’s Mama didn’t move it. It’d even—it was almost like it was pulling away from us, just singling out Jim’s Mama. On its own.”
“You didn’t get up and move it?”
“No.”
“Jim’s Mama didn’t get up and move it?”
“No. She’d just be sitting there. Chuckling at it.”
“At—just whatever was on?”
“Jim’s Mama didn’t care. She wouldn’t switch or tune it. She didn’t even know how to work it. Jim’s Mama couldn’t turn a TV on or off, to save her. But it seemed like it give her a better picture, too.”
“Irene, see, there’s more of that black at the bottom.”
“Course, the children complained. You know Dawn and little Jim. They’ll sit there glued to that TV and yell at it, ‘That’s stupid!’ Listen to a commercial about how some product’s so wonderful for you and yell, ‘Yeah, it probly poisons you!’ Lorne Greene’ll come on with his fifteen-year-old dog, you know, and they’ll yell, ‘That dog isn’t fifteen!’”
“Children get so critical.”
“But they do want to watch. ‘The TV just likes Nannaw! We want another TV! We want a TV with Remotronic control!’ Said they couldn’t concentrate on their homework without it.”
“And … it was an odor, though?”
“Yes. And anyway, last … a week ago Friday night, Jim’s Mama was sleeping over—she had baby-sat, you know, while we were at Jim’s Elks installation—and when we got home she and the kids were all gone to bed, and in the night we heard a clattery noise. But we didn’t think about it, at the time … There is a lot of black down there.”
“It’s edging up, Irene. You can almost see the color again below it. And, Irene, the hue is still not—”
“We got up the next morning and Jim’s Mama? Was gone. And the TV? Was gone.”
“Gone?”
“No note. No trace. No explanation.”
“Why, I-rene.”
“We haven’t seen that TV. Or Jim’s Mama. Since.”
“Can you imagine?”
“Uh-huh. We don’t … Look!”
“Irene! Is that—?”
“Look! Jim! Turn it up! Jim, c’mere! Your Mama’s on ‘Real People’!”
“And she’s—Irene! Isn’t that your old TV?”
NOTES FROM THE EDGE CONFERENCE
LEFEBVRE, OPENING REMARKS:
Don’t know all there is to know about edge. Do know: Misconceptions abound. Fixed? No. Plottable? No. Like line on map, where important things lie on either side? No.
“Sometimes my edge is a round edge.” Now tongue, now groove.
Edge, as in: Lip. Verge. Pungency. To sidle. Advantage. “Near bound of nerves’ end, inside of out.”
(Mutterings.)
Registration packets: Should have been plenty. Ppl. who took more than one should return same.
Armentout, “Edges and Hedges: Things that Get in the Way”:
Ppl. say, “I want to live out there close to the edge. But I don’t want to look funny.”
Cf. Gary Busey. Look at him first time: “Damn, no way that man can be a star.” But: “Sure, the man looks funny at first—anybody they thought of to play Buddy Holly had to look a little funny right off. But next thing you know, hey, he’s out there.” Beyond a star. Where it is. Raising hell in the social notes. “Jumping into people’s sets, man.”
Hully, Perl, Tibbett panel, “Getting Words in Edgewise”:
“Outfit” self for E.? (Figurative goose-down, asbestos.) Whole industry growing up. But is to gear for it to be not out close to it? Or to … temper it? Perhaps.
Out on E. for its own sake, or should we wait until propelled there by just cause? Hard question. Finally unanswerable.
Diff. ppl. higher/lower threshold of E.?
“I mean, I’ll start a sentence sometimes and halfway have to stop—skreek!—not on the edge anymore. But the first half …”
“Would you be interested in approaching the edge again, possibly in a more definitive manner?”
“Well …”
“Or a less definitive one?”
“Ah!”
Diff. cultures, diff. E’s. Navaho: Whole notion of edge as maze. (Maize?)
“Out on E.,” as compared to “hip”:
Rohle: “Yeah, but whoever heard of The Razor’s Hip?”
Many ppl. hip. Well, to be fair, not many—not untold numbers. More aren’t.
Basic point of hip: Certain people know you know what. “You know, it’s a social thing.”
Hip: Pick up on yet unassimilated Black English. “Come on over to the crib and we’ll …” “This Johnson.” Call everything a “Johnson.”
For some ppl., hip not enough.
Van Roud II, on Loss of E.:
“Suddenly this sinking sensation. Put a foot out one way, and … solid ground.
“Put it out the other way, and … solid ground.
“I was in some kind of Kansas of the mind—Sunday afternoon of the soul. I said, ‘Whoa, get back.’ I was upset.”
Stapenink, “Lines: Toward a Definition”:
Where does closeness to E. begin? Is there fine line separating area within which one may be said to be out close to E. from area within which one may be said to be cut off from E.? In that case: Does E. have an e.?
That line past which being close to E. begins. Greater value in being on that line? On edge of that line?
E. an absolute, or gradations? Sort of close to E. Really really close to E. Marginally barely close to E. Nearly close to E.
(Grumblings.)
During mixer, overheard:
“My friend and I were talking. I’m saying like who is your best rock star and who is your best this star and that star and it hits us, all our best ones like live out near the edge. And we’re talking you know and I go, ‘That’s why you like me. I’m out near the edge.’
“And he goes like he’s not believing me, he goes, ‘Yeah?’
“I go, ‘Yeah.’
“‘So what’s it look like over there?’ he goes.
“I go, ‘You put your toes out over it and look out and down and you feel something pressing up evenly on each one of your toes, toe toe toe toe toe, and you see somebody looking out and up at you.’ Because—
“And I don’t know what hit him, he goes like, ‘Yeah! Oh, yeah! Oh yeah, Lori! Sure, Lori!’ and goes out and rents this motel room somewhere and tears it up.”
“Seeing the Humor of It”—Dr. Ardis Wickwire: “How you like yr. edge?” “Which first, chicken or edge?” “Big butter and edge man.”
Ha.
Grosjean, Three types not near edge:
(1) Don’t know where edge is, never will. Don’t even know what direction it’s in. (Voice: “That’s cool.”)
(2) Grew up along the edge, or had one or more parents who were out close to it or named them something like Guava, and now want to spend their adult lives getting far from edges as possible. Beer on table, some art on walls that don’t mess over their relaxation, nobody after them with knife. (Voice: “That’s cool.”)
(3) Don’t believe there even is an edge. So-called “Round-Earthers.” (Voice: “Yeah!”)
>
Overheard conversation of electricians outside conf. rm.:
“Christ, my mom is dying and getting this SSI. Supplemental Security Income. You can only have fifteen hundred in the bank, so we took the rest of it out for her, put it in the house, and Christ the money come pouring in. For my mom, fine, but Christ how about all these guys who won’t work. There’s a limit. There’s a limit. It’s the middle-income guy—fifteen, eighteen, twenty thou, and you and me are paying for it. Christ my mom is dying and getting this SSI. …”
(Poss. paper for next year: “Middle-Edge Spread”?)
Crits. of conf.:
(1) Missed most fundamental point.
(2) What those splotches up on Vu-Graph?
a. Finger smudges
b. Insect matter
c. Eyesight
d. Weren’t any
(3) Same old crowd running.
(4) Ppl. screaming in ppl.’s ears.
(5) Should have been more registration packets. And more in them.
(6) Not out close to E.
LeFebvre, closing:
Always “same old crowd running things,” because when something has to be done you find out pretty quickly there are only a few people you can call on.
Cutting/leading E. dichotomy? “So fine, can only be palped by surprise.”
(Boos.)
Banquet, installation new officers 8:30 in Ballroom C. (Thing of throwing food: “Just obnoxious.”)
Proposals for new award categories must be in Sept. 1.
FACING ISMISM
PEOPLE SAY TO ME, “Why don’t you go on the lecture circuit, like so many others do, and rake in so many dollars a night while stirring vocal, even bodily, enthusiasm in auditors numbering into the hundreds and thousands right there physically in front of you, instead of sitting all alone like you do going ticky ticky ticky on an empty piece of paper rolled into a lonesome machine?”
I say, “Well I tried that.”
Sure. I used to go out there on the hustings, which is what those of us who were in that profession called them, in honor of Colonel Reece Hustings, who, in 1907, took his oration about galvanism and microdots (which he thought he had made up out of thin air; he didn’t live to see microdots become a reality, but then I don’t know anybody who has seen any microdots, you have to take them on faith) around to 117 different American cities and towns in 129 days.