Worth Noting Pages 51-55

WORTH NOTING PAGE 51

·          Book to buy:  Business Babble by David Olive, published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.,

      defined as “a cynic’s dictionary of corporate jargon” -- e.g., Bottomline: the figure
 representing hope minus reality

·         On not being the underdog, from Wilt Chamberlain:  “Nobody loves Goliath.”

·                     On the business of Modeling:  author Michael Gross:

No matter what you call it, the modeling business is all about selling the bodies of young girls       

·         From Memoirs of an Invisible Man: Daryl Hannah says to Chevy Chase as they make-out in the ladies room of a restaurant, “Let’s not do anything cheap and meaningless.”  Chevy asks, “how much do I owe you?”

·         From Picasso:

o    On Impressionism: It’s like eating sugar all day.

o    On Art: In art, you must kill your father.

o    On Art: Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.

o    On the advent of photography in 1800’s -- Beaudelaire: Photography is the refuge of failed painters.

·         Degas on why he never married -- There is love and there is painting; we have only one heart.

·                     On drawing horses:  All four feet are off the ground only when they’re tucked under the horse.

·         On the mundane, from a movie review: “Return to Me” is the cinematic equivalent of meat loaf -- comfort food that’s reassuring in its utter lack of sophistication and surprises.

·                     On punctuation: “Punctuation is everything.  An English professor writes the words ‘a woman without her man is nothing’ on the blackboard.  The men then punctuated: ‘A woman, without her man, is nothing.’  The women wrote: A woman: without her, man is nothing.’”

·                     Cezanne said of Monet:  Monet is only an eye, but my god, what an eye.

·         On Frankie Coffee Cake Being A Jinx: (from A Bronx Tale) “He’d go to the track and the teller would give him his tickets already ripped up.”  (a tribute to my cousin Rick)

·         On Coaching from Tom Landry:  “Coaching is about getting players to do what they don’t want to do, to achieve what they want to achieve.”

·         From Horse Heaven by Jane Smiley:

·         Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want.

·         Only four shapes in a two-dimensional space can actually touch each other- therefore a mapmaker only needs five colors to make a map.

·         It's being "time to go" was a simple concept, in theory, if you didn't ask why.

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·         From Horse Heaven by Jane Smiley (cont’d):

·         The Tibetan Book of Thoroughbred Training

1. Do not pay attention or investigate; leave your mind in its own sphere

2. Do not see any fault anywhere

3. Do not take anything to heart

4. Do not hanker after signs of progress

5. Although this may be called inattention, do not fall prey to laziness

6. Be in a state of constant inspection

·         Plans were the worst.  They drained you of every bit of present life, until all you were was a containment building, and the ghost of yourself was lost on the vapors of the future, waiting to exist.

·         Now he was required to be patient, and, to be perfectly frank, there was a lot about patience that felt just like not caring much at all.  But that was a state you could take a little rest in, not a state you could live in.  It was too boring, and, most of the time, he hated being bored most of all.

·         If you want to know how to be a good mother, he had said to the "foundation mare" on the occasion of a memorable and not easily forgiven dispute, go out to the farm and stand among the mares and their foals and try to get it.  A bad mother was nervous but neglectful. A good mother was attentive and calm.  It was as simple as that, he had said.

·         "And the love of God will make me happy?"  "Here's how it works, Cousin.  First you admit it exists, then you admit you can see it, then you admit you can feel it, then you admit you want it, then you return it, and then it fills you.  Then you are happy."

·         Pandemonium shook the grandstand, that an obscure horse from California who had gone off at twenty-to-one odds should win the Arc!  Rosalind smiled.  Of course, Limitless had not known of his own obscurity.  The inability of horses to read the sports pages, Al had always said, was one of their advantages as a sports investment.

·         On Art from Robert Henri:

We are not here to do what's already been done. 

·         On actor Sir Alec Guinness: "I had countless first impressions of him," playwright Ronald Harwood once wrote.  "Each time I saw him, in films, later in the theatre, I had the uncanny feeling I had never before watched him act."

·         On Al Gore:  On ABC's Good Morning America, Charlie Gibson recently contributed a memorable oxymoron, promising "a live interview with Al Gore."

·         On the Virtue of Being Unreasonable:  “A reasonable man adapts to the world around him.  The unreasonable man expects the world to adapt to him.  Therefore, all progress is made by unreasonable men.”  -- George Bernard Shaw

·         On the Virtue of Being Alone:  "The nurse of full-grown souls is solitude." -- James Russell Lowell (1819-91), Columbus     

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·         Books: Baseball's Pivotal Era  Univ. Press of KY; Business Babble  David Olive - John Wiley& Sons; Notes on the Synthesis of Form, Christopher Alexander, system architect.   Alla Prima by artist Richard Schmid (Stove Prairie Press); A Massive Swelling: Celebrity Re-examined as a Grotesque, Crippling Disease. -- Cintra Wilson (Viking)

·         On the Zen Qualities of Surfcasting from The Surfcaster's Quest:  “The rote process of casting and retrieving a plug satisfies the four basic requirements described by Eastern mystics for relaxing the mind and expanding the consciousness. 

First of all, surfcasting is carried out in a peaceful environment.  It matters not that the ocean itself can be thunderous, or that the honking of geese or plaintive cry of gulls wheeling overhead adds to the seaside cacophony.  There are no honking horns, screeching sirens or squealing brakes intruding on nature’s sounds to disturb the surfcaster’s serenity.

Second, concentrating on a plug soaring through the air and then hitting the water is similar to the archer's following of an arrow as it flies toward its target.  While the surfcaster’s eyes are riveted on this brightly painted lure, his mind is free to wander.

Third, the motions of casting create a passive attitude considered all-important in meditation.  That’s true at least 99 percent of the time when no fish is on the other end of the line.  Extraneous thoughts and mental images may drift in and out of the surfcaster’s awareness without interrupting the physical action.  Unless the monofilament line suddenly snarls into a tangled bird’s nest, one cast automatically follows another without interruption.

Fourth, it’s a comfortable activity.  There’s no strain involved in casting out or reeling in a plug.  It’s an easy rhythmic action that can be carried on for hours without much physical or mental fatigue.  But it’s the combination of all four of these elements that produces the transcendental state of mind considered essential for successful meditation.”

·         Funny exchange between two senile members of a staid old club:

“Good to see you again, old boy,” said the first member.

“Ah, wonderful to see you, too,” said the second

“But forgive me, I seem to have forgotten your name.”

“Quite all right, old boy, said the first.  How soon do you need to know?”

·         Henry David Thoreau on the importance of immersing ourselves in nature while the opportunity exists.

      Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.  

·         On Marriage and The Seven Year Itch:  "Every man in his middle thirties falls in love with his wife's opposite."               -- essayist Lewis Mumford               

·         On Aircraft Reliability from The Lion's Game: "She flies like a homesick angel."                   

 

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·         On Fate from Detective John Corey, The Lion's Game: "I don't believe in predestination, fate, chance, or luck.  I believe that a combination of free will and random chaos controls our destinies, that the world is sort of like a lady's garment sale at Loemann's.  In any case, you have to be awake and alert at all times, ready and able to exercise your free will amidst an increasingly chaotic and dangerous environment."

                       

·         Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want.

·         Only four shapes in a two-dimensional space can actually touch each other- therefore a mapmaker only needs five colors to make a map.

·         On the safety of anesthesia:  "Nowhere in life will you have someone watching your every breath and listening to your every heartbeat."

·         Gloria Steinem on Men and Marriage:

"A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle."

It was the institution of marriage that was the problem, designed as she put it, "for a person and a half."

·         Bobbie Knight On Leaving Indiana (from U.S. News) - "I want to coach in the worst way."  Sometimes, it seems, he did.

·         Joe Leiberman blames Hollywood: for a "culture of carnage."

·         Terrone -the disparaging name for southern Italian peasants

·         Mammoni (Mammono sing.) - Italian - mama's boys

·         U.S. News 10/23 - On The Boy Scouts: "Akin to a hate group"?  Only if traditional morality is now a form of hate.  Boy Scouts are explicitly taught to respect all their fellow citizens.  The Scouts issue no anti-gay vitriol and have joined no political alliance to oppose gays.  The Scouts brief to the Supreme Court said simply, "We can respect the plea of many gay and lesbian Americans not to have the majority's morality imposed on them.  By the same token, we ask that a contrary morality not be forced upon private associations like the Boy Scouts..."

·         On souls from movie Bedazzled: "Souls are overrated", coos the devil as impersonated by Elizabeth Hurley (Princess of Darkness with offices in purgatory, hell and Los Angeles). "It's like your appendix -- you'll never miss it."

·         Connie Hawkins on Aging Athletes:  “The older we get, the better we used to be.”

 

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·         To become a BASE jumper you must leap off each of the four types of structures that form the sport's acronym-Buildings, Antennas, Spans (bridges) and Earth (cliffs).  Scientific formula- T=VF/S (Thrill equals Velocity times Fatality rate divided by Safety precautions).

·         In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe

Carl Sagan

·         No two people hear the same music.         Joe Jackson

·         On Wall Street and the effect of negative momentum: "You can't catch a falling knife." "It's a vicious cycle: the markets fall because the economy is slowing, consumers aren't spending because the markets are falling, the economy is slowing because consumers aren't spending."

·         On Wall Street and when a continued drop is likely: "Another reason the Nasdaq could continue to drop is that small investors have yet to give up.  Many experts believe a market has only seen its bottom when the little guy bails out and cuts his losses."

·         Joe Jackson bio p. 40, 41

·         Most people strive to be knowledgeable in the things that advance their self-interests.

·         Advertising is like baseball - its best years are behind us.

·         Politics Defined: Ambrose Bierce

“Politics is a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.”

·         On the Past: Professor John McCleod (Mel Gibson) from The Man Without a Face.

“People spend too much time thinking about the past.  Whatever else it is, it’s gone.”

·         Celebrity Trivia

·         Kate Winslet has titanic feet.  Size 10

·         Julia Stiles wants to be marooned on a desert island with Freddie Prinze Jr.                (We can only hope)

·         Nicole Kidman’s nickname in school was “Stalky”

·         Claudia Shiffer remembers every one of her 700 magazine covers

·         Natalie Portman was discovered in a NY pizzeria

·         Grace Kelly movies aren’t shown in Monaco.  Prince Rainier’s order

·         Paul Hogan used to work in a morgue

·         Andie MacDowell’s first name is Rosalie

·         Samuel L. Jackson’s “L” stands for Leroy

·         Bob Newhart used to be an accountant

·         Britney Spears is addicted to Pop Tarts (doesn’t she know about the nickname?)