by D G Rose
this girl is just a kid with too much make up and a ring in her nose that she’s using to support the earphone cable from her cell phone so that the microphone is suspended close to her mouth… I saw a girl using her nose ring to support the microphone cable and I thought it was pretty clever.
While I struggled in the crushing grip of her logic… A line very similar to this appears in a Calvin and Hobbs comic.
“First day on your new legs?” This is a thing my ex-wife used to say to her brother many years ago.
“Used to be the Frog Tavern until the sign broke.” She continued. “Now it’s just the Half-Frog Tavern.” This is, in some twisted way, related to my favorite town name, Frog Level, a real town in Virginia, not too far from Richmond.
“I’m a vegetarian.” Amy interrupted. I, also, am a vegetarian and I know how hard it can be to find a restaurant that serves palatable vegetarian fare…
“You’ve got a spot of stew on your face.” I said to Amy, wiping the stew with my finger. This scene recalls one that happened to me. In my case it was a crumb, but the rest of the conversation is more or less verbatim.
And six, Xanadu is a place, like any other place, only…” she gave a shrug, “more so.” In the movie Casablanca, a young girl asks Rick what kind of a man is Inspector Renault and Rick replies, “A man like any other man, only more so.” If you haven’t seen it, you should.
“Well, that’s the way it works, innit? A friend and I watched the British television series “Misfits” and one of the characters, used this word ‘innit’ in place of ‘isn’t it’ and I liked it.
The two groups seem to be involved in an unfriendly competition to see who can sing and shout and pound the loudest and the longest. This is another reference to Casablanca. You should watch it!
The bar had mirrored windows and the man, who I once knew, noticed that he always looked particularly good in one window. There is a bar near my home and it does have mirrored windows, and sure enough, I do look better in that window than in other mirrors, and for a long time, I went out of my way to walk past that window. I did think that it was a pity that the rest of the world couldn’t see me the way I looked in that mirrored window. Oddly, I’ve never been in the bar. I’m better now, mostly.
“Well,” the man says with a smile. “I would love to stay and chat, I am sure that you are a fascinating conversationalist, but miles to go before I sleep and all that.” This line “Miles to go before I sleep” is from Robert Frost’s poem Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.
Miranda and I must have watched it, together, twenty times when we were kids. At one point, we had practically memorized the whole thing and we would spend days at a time trading quotes. My brother, Adam, and I did watch this movie more than 20 times as kids and we were certainly capable of quoting large segments. All the parts quoted here are from memory (and so, perhaps, incorrect). We also did argue over this scene with the Black Knight.
Suddenly Amy stopped, her head jerking up and then swinging side to side. “It’s gone.” She sighed. “So beautiful and strange and new. I almost wish I had never heard it since it was to end so soon.” Much of this scene, up to the appearance of the Great God Pan, is lifted, word for word (as much as possible) from the classic English children’s book, The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. Which I love and try to quote in all my books. It goes without saying that Pan in The Wind in the Willows, does not sport a giant-erect-cock.
John Graham Chambers’ rules. Chambers is the guy who codified the Marquess of Queensbury rules that boxing is based on. This isn’t something I knew, I had to look it up to put it in the book.
‘Astley's Amphitheatre’ the sign at the entrance proclaimed. Astley’s Amphitheatre is considered the first circus. It opened in the late 1700, so it’s prefect for a late 18th Century – early 19th Century English Romantic poet. Another thing that I had to look up.
Amy stood on a painted wooden platform, her arms held over her head and one leg crooked against the other in a ballerina pose and she twirled around and around while tinny music came from the base. This is modeled on a scene from the movie “Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang”, which includes a woman who pretends to be a ballerina on a music box. You should watch it. It’s wonderful.
It’s not fucking rocket surgery. This is a thing a friend from New Orleans used to say. Along with similar twisted phrases like, ‘soup sandwich’ and ‘football bat’ usually preceded by ‘fucked up like a…’
“The trash can fire in the parking lot of Hell. This is either a line from a song off the Mountain Goats’ album Tallahassee, or my misremembering of the line. Either way – you should get the album.
Its chest lay open, revealing the heart, a diamond crossed with a pearl, more magnificent than either of its ancestors… The line about a diamond crossed with a pearl is from the song “Kid Charlemange” By Steely Dan. Here is an interesting fact about me that, I feel, marks me out from the rest of humanity: I don’t really care for music. By which I mean that I never think – You know what? Let’s put some music on. I never listen to music as an activity or while doing other activities. I’m only exposed to music as an incidental.
Before us stood a little man his size offset by the grand scale of everything around us. “What do you wish in the Tower?” He asked. This is inspired by the part in the Wizard of Oz where our heroes come to the Wizard’s Castle and ask to see the Wizard. I wanted to copy it directly, but it didn’t work out, so it’s just inspired…
And I held on to her with everything in me. More Mountain Goats – just get the fucking album already!
“Not just anybody can demand to see the great Nebuchadnezzar II, Lord Protector of the Tower. The real Nebuchadnezzar II, was supposedly the king referred to in the Bible as the builder of the Tower of Babel.
Neb introduced us to his wife Amytis. Amytis was the name of the principal wife of Nebuchadnezzar II
She does it with better grace, but I do it more natural. Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 3
Having a daughter is like having a string tied somewhere under your left rib, tightly knotted to a similar string in your child, and if something were to happen to your child, if the cord were to snap, then you’d take to bleeding internally. This is, more or less, a quote from Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte.
Then it was like a part of my brain, overused by fear, burned out and I worried less. And slept better. My older brother had a daughter, the first child in the next generation, and I remember thinking that it would drive me crazy with worry to have a daughter, but my brother seemed unusually calm, and I thought that the worry center in his brain must have burned out from overuse.
“Bah! You’ve raised your prices usuriously! This is a quote from a Badger comic. When I was in college I was a big Badger comics fan. In this scene, Ham the Weather Wizard has purchased some weather effects on credit, but the bill come in higher than he expects and he is complaining to his supplier.
that would try to despoil them of the godhood they were trying to rightfully steal. This line about trying to steal what someone else has rightfully stolen is from the Princess Bride.
She stepped forward and rapped her knuckles on my forehead. I mean she actually did it. Back to the Future.
Of course, I’m just speculating about a hypothesis… This phrase “Speculating about a hypothesis” is form the Cohen Brother’s film, Miller’s Crossing, which I love, although nobody else seems to.
“These here are all coasters, you’ll be wanting The Wedding Guest, not due in for a fortnight. The Wedding Guest is named after a character who appears in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
But all I found was cogent woe. When I lived in New Orleans, I had a friend, a lovely girl, who was dating a guy who played in a band. The band was named: Cogent Woe, and it as an apt name, because when you heard them play, you were unhappy and you knew exactly why.
The House of Diligence, 82A Frangipani Lane. I live at numb
er 82A. Although not on Frangipani Lane, although I would enjoy living on Frangipani Lane very much. It’s a fabulous word.
I was admitted by a gorgeous flunkey. Gorgeous flunky comes from Mark Twain’s short story The Million Pound Bank Note. It shows something of the evolution of the word ‘flunky’ which is not presented in Twain’s story in a negative light.
A small sluggish stream ran through it and we had to climb a footbridge to cross. When I lived in Richmond, we would frequent a Polynesian restaurant that had a little stream with a footbridge in the dining room.
he held a hand in front of his face, the fingers curled but for one, and a hawk-like bird, perhaps a kite, perched on the lone finger, its tail slowly striking inside the lips of his open mouth. Leonardo Di Vinci had a dream where a kite, the bird not the toy, struck the inside of his mouth several times with its tail.
Did the Hand then of the Potter shake? This line is from Omar Khayyam’s wonderful Rubaiyat, as translated by Edmund Fitzgerald. I cannot say enough about how beautiful this poem is. I have committed large sections to memory. Here I quote you a quatrain (from memory – so it may differ from the original). Awake! For morning in the bowl of night, has flung the stone that puts the stars to flight, and lo! The hunter of the east has caught the sultan’s turret in a noose of light.
A dream is like a wave, it sits up and says; ‘I am a wave!’ but really it is just an undulation of the ocean. This is an argument made by my father, to me, as a reason why I should see value in these “be reabsorbed back into god after death” ideas.
Captain Peleg, of The Wedding Guest, came to see me last night. Captain Peleg is one of the owners of the Pequod, the ship in Moby Dick. Because The Rime of the Ancient Mariner contains few details about the ship and crew, I borrowed many from Moby Dick. Flask, Daggoo and others are characters in Moby Dick.
“Marchant service be damned. Talk not that lingo to me. Dost see that leg?—I’ll take that leg away from thy stern, if ever thou talkest of the marchant service to me again. Marchant service indeed!” Lifted directly from Moby Dick.
Stubb told me that the ship held 30 crew (although I feel sure that I met 43). In Moby Dick, the Pequod is referred to as having 30 crew, although the reader is introduced to 43 crewmembers in the course of the book.
They explained to me that the sailors were paid no wages, but that each hand received a certain share of the profits and that these shares were called lays. Much of this discussion of lays is lifted, with some modifications, from Moby Dick.
She held the bottle up to the lamp and gave it a shake. “A little tobacco, a little cod liver oil, a little bit of gunpowder and a secret ingredient.” When I was young, I had a book about whaling, and it included a description similar to this one of a medicine that was given to sick sailors in an attempt to dissuade shirkers. I no longer have the book, but I remember that the medicine had tobacco and gunpowder and I’m pretty sure, cod liver oil.
“I hate you so much.” I whispered into her ear as I hugged her closer. This is a quote from Catbug, in Rebecca, which is probably the greatest 2 minutes of animation ever produced. Look it up on youtube, you won’t regret it.
“I was in the market.” She told me. “To buy some supplies for tonight’s dinner. This story is a traditional Chinese folktale, modified here, but essentially complete.
‘Come on ya fucker!’ I shouted!” It’s always struck me as odd that people don’t want you to use ‘bad language’ around kids. I mean it’s not like you can keep them from learning these words forever. So, what does it matter if little Bobby learns to say fuck at 7 or at 12?
Amy sidled up to me and hooked her thumb around my thumb. I had a friend many years ago who would hold my thumb in her fist as we walked. This thumb holding is in remembrance of that.
“I’ve always had that. I think it’s because I’m a quarter Czech and that’s the delineation.” When I was young and with little experience with stomachs, I had a very similar conversation with a woman.
I cried out, “Pleh! Pleh!” Just like Miranda used to do when we were kids. A friend from college taught me this pronunciation of ‘help’ backwards.
The floor was a steeply inclined plane sloping downward. Happily some cracks, abrasures of the soil, and other irregularities, served the place of steps; and we descended slowly. Starting here and continuing for the next several paragraphs is text lifted, with little modification, from Jules Vern’s Journey to the Center of the Earth.
We stood on a gentle mountainside overlooking a peaceful valley. There was abundant sunlight, colorful birds filled the air and a sparkling river winked at us from the valley floor. This paragraph is lifted from my own book, Let Slip the Princesses of War. I mean, how many times am I going to write a description of a valley seen from a hillside?
At first, I thought I had become a child again, and I admit that the idea filled me with a mixture of pleasure and revulsion. This whole story is very loosely based on a Chinese folktale about a man who needs a cricket and who finds one, but his son lets the cricket escape and the son falls into a well and the son becomes a cricket and wins the championship. Many of the details in my story come from the folktale, including the fight against the rooster. But that folktale is more about filial piety and my version is about something different. Also my version is told from the point of view of the boy who becomes a cricket. If you google ‘the cricket boy chinese folktale’ you’ll find it. It’s much shorter than my version.
“Not a finger! In the morning, I’ll go get the County Magistrate and show him the cricket, but until then, nobody touches it.” A Christmas Story. I guess there’s a book, but see the movie.
“They’re not even in the same weight class!” Our father objected. Apparently in real cricket fighting they do, in fact, have weight classes.
The rules clearly state that the fight is over when one cricket begins to avoid the other. This is a real rule of cricket fighting.
We came to you, like Alexander, offering you anything you might desire. And you replied to us, like Diogenes, ‘Please stand out of my sun’. The story of Alexander the Great and Diogenes the philosopher is basically as I describe it. Alexander is visiting the city where Diogenes lives as a vagabond. Alexander goes to visit Diogenes who is lying in the street and the Emperor asks the philosopher if he can do anything for him. Diogenes replies, “Please stand out of my sun.” Then Alexander says, “If I were not Alexander, I think that I should like to be Diogenes.” And Diogenes says “If I were not Diogenes, I think that I should like to be Diogenes, too.”
Amy read the name out loud. “Quest Valley. It’s a little D&D, isn’t it? Complete the Quest and win the reward!” For the record, I have never played D&D.
“Well, is there a quest in Quest Valley?” Amy asked. Quest Valley comes from The Conference of the Birds, by the Sufi poet Farid ud-Din Attar (Attar of Nishapur). It’s a long allegorical work about Islam, and I wanted to work some of it into my story, but in the end, I basically just took the name of the first valley in the poem. The poem, itself, has the birds travel through seven valleys, each of which is designed to bring the traveler closer to Islam. But none of it really worked for my story.
“Our family, the Ma family of Quest Valley, like all families of any standing, has its family god. I had a friend whose family name was Ma and this family takes its name from her.
Well, of course, the family of the boy, the Fong family of Quest Valley. This family name, Fong, is not from a friend, but from the Disney animation Mulan, which I love.
One morning, as we made our offering, as we did every day, in our family shrine, it was clear that the god had abandoned us. This story is not based on an old Chinese folktale. I know, you thought I was stealing everything! This story is really inspired by the biblical story of Racheal and Leah, who steal their father’s (Laban) family gods and I thought, if someone steals your family god, how do you go about getting it back?
“What’s next, oh fearless leader?”
Christabel asked Amy with a mock salute. Boris and Natasha the spies from Bullwinkle and Rocky report to Fearless Leader. Who, oddly, seems patterned on Moshe Dayan, the former Israeli Minister of Defense…
And that.” She concluded several hours later. “Is how I finally defeated the Green Knight. He gave me this scar.” She said, indicating a thin line that went all the way around her neck. This references Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a story of the Knights of the Roundtable, which includes a game where participants take turns cutting each other’s heads off.
“You mean the 5-foot tall glowing letters that say ‘This way to the Dragon’? Yeah, I see it. I mean, I see it now.” This is another part lifted from my book, Let Slip the Princesses of War.
She shrugged. She was always fucking shrugging, like everything was a big joke, like nothing was important. So, I noticed that I was having people shrug a lot, and the choice was either, go back and scrape out all that shrugging or make something out of it. I made something out of it.