Dead Beat Meets The Lemon Drop Kid

Let me take you back to the 23rd of the 1st 1949 when I find myself at the race track and who should I bump into, well settle back and listen as I tell you how I met The Lemon Drop Kid

Cider in your Ear

Early on, the great D.R. took Dead Beat aside, gave him these words of advice:

“One of these days. D. B., in your travels, a guy is going to come up to you and show you a nice brand-new deck of cards on which the seal is not yet broken, and this guy is going to offer to bet you that he can make the Jack of Spades jump out of the deck and squirt cider in your ear. But, son, do not bet this man, for as sure as you are standing there, you are going to end up with an earful of cider.”

"I hear you, Damon," Dead Beat might have replied if he didn't have cider in his ears at the time.

Dancing Dan's Christmas

Dead Beat learned just about everything he knows from Damon Runyon (and maybe even a little more...) So seeing as it is Christmas almost, how better to start the season than the opening to Dancing Dan's Christmas. Word to the wise. Get your hands on everything D.R. ever wrote, read and then re-read.

"NOW one time it comes on Christmas, and in fact it is the evening before Christmas, and I am in Good Time Charley Bernstein's little speakeasy in West Forty-seventh Street, wishing Charley a Merry Christmas and having a few hot Tom and Jerrys with him. This hot Tom and Jerry is an old time drink that is once used by one and all in this country to celebrate Christmas with, and in fact it is once so popular that many people think Christmas is invented only to furnish an excuse for hot Tom and Jerry, although of course this is by no means true. But anybody will tell you that there is nothing that brings out the true holiday spirit like hot Tom and Jerry, and I hear that since Tom and Jerry goes out of style in the United States, the holiday spirit is never quite the same. The reason hot Tom and Jerry goes out of style is because it is necessary to use rum and one thing and another in making Tom and Jerry, and naturally when rum becomes illegal in this country Tom and Jerry is also against the law, because rum is something that is very hard to get around town these days. For a while some people try making Tom and Jerry without putting rum in it, but somehow it never has the same old holiday spirit, so nearly everybody finally gives up in disgust, and this is not suprising, as making Tom and Jerry is by no means child's play. In fact, it takes quite an expert to make good Tom and Jerry, and in the days when it is not illegal a good hot Tom and Jerry maker commands good wages and many friends. Now of course Good Time Charley and I are not using rum in the Tom and Jerry we are making, as we do not wish to do anything illegal. What we are using is rye whisky that Good Time Charley gets on a doctor's prescription from a drug store, as we are personally drinking this hot Tom and Jerry and naturally we are not foolish enough to use any of Good Time Charley's own rye in it. The prescription for the rye whisky comes from old Doc Moggs, who prescribes it for Good Time Charley's rheumatism in case Charley happens to get rheumatism, as Doc Moggs says there is nothing better for rheumatism than rye whisky, especially if it is made up in a hot Tom and Jerry. In fact, old Doc Moggs comes around and has a few seidels of hot Tom and Jerry with us for his own rheumatism...

Do Not Know - A New Technical Term

Dead Beat has an interest in American foreign policy. You knew that. Now take heed:

The starkly different view of Iran's nuclear program that emerged from U.S. spy agencies this week was the product of a surge in clandestine intelligence-gathering in Iran as well as radical changes in the way the intelligence community analyzes information. Drawing lessons from the intelligence debacle over supposed Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, Director of National Intelligence required agencies to consult more sources and to say to a larger intelligence community audience precisely what they know and how they know it -- and to acknowledge, to a degree previously unheard of, what they do not know.
" 'Do not know' is a new technical term for an NIE."


"It's not getting it wrong, it's that [the intelligence] collection may have been insufficient," said Laipson, now president of the Henry L. Stimson Center, a defense think tank. "It takes years to know the truth."

Writers. DNK.

It takes years to know the truth.

Put Your Hook Into the Atlantic Ocean

Claire Keegan. Irish writer. Richard Ford's pick for book of the year. It doesn't get any better than that.

Anyway D.B. remembers Claire swanning around Waterstones in Dublin when D.B. and C.K. were both included in the Phoenix Book of Irish Short Stories AllThoseYearsAgo.

"I grew up on a farm, the youngest of six children. Three boys and three girls on a mixed farm. We had tillage and cattle and horses and sheep and pigs and fowl. I was raised on fowl money when I was young."

Well the world moved on, the earth tried to shift on its axis. Listen to this. Words of advice from Ms. Keegan.

"If you're a writer you write. If you're a fisherman, you put your hook into the Atlantic Ocean."

That Great Canyon in the Sky

Dead Beat has moments when he thinks he may well be Evel Kneivel. In fact he knows he is. I did not die this week. I simply put my respiratory system on hold.

Evel, you brought me through a doubtful filled childhood.

T.G.

You have ridden over that Great Canyon In The Sky

Literature - It's Just Rock'N'Roll

It has been a while since The Man With the Goatee and Dead Beat shared accommodation, but every once and a while they like to chew the fat.

"Say what you been thinking about T.C.?"

"I've thought about the domination of the literary arts by theory over the past 25 years -- which I detest -- and it's as if you have to be a critic to mediate between the author and the reader and that's utter crap. Literature can be great in all ways, but it's just entertainment like rock'n'roll or a film. It is entertainment. If it doesn't capture you on that level, as entertainment, movement of plot, then it doesn't work. Nothing else will come out of it. The beauty of the language, the characterisation, the structure, all that's irrelevant if you're not getting the reader on that level -- moving a story. If that's friendly to readers, I cop to it."

"Didn't we have this conversation before, T.C.?"

"A million times, D.B.."

"Didn't I always agree with you. T.C.?"

"Doesn't everyone forget, D.B.?"

"Joyce forgot towards the end, T.C."

"Maybe we should have let him room with us, D.B."

"I thought he was the one in the corner singing to himself while writing dirty letters to his girlfriend, T.C. and never changed his socks."

"Wasn't that you, D.B.?"

"It's like you say, T.C. Doesn't everyone forget?"

Rolling Podcast: Richard Ford Reunites with John Cheever

So Dead Beat is on a roll with podcasts. Listen to this:

Richard Ford Reads John Cheever’s Reunion

Grammar Girl

Okay, Dead Beat is in Pod Cast Heaven.

Listen up: Grammar Girl

Go to her deal on prepositions.

For now here are the comments:


Amy Says:11/2/2007 5:11:58 PM We have a joke here in Boston about this: Harvard freshman: Where's the Library at? Harvard senior: Here at Hahvahd we don't end our sentences with a preposition. Harvard freshman: OK, then, where's the library at, asshole?
richard Says:11/2/2007 3:23:04 PM i like double negatives i noticed that there are no comments with no responces!! there one ha ! ha! see ya
John Says:11/2/2007 3:00:50 PM That is the sort of English up with which I shall not put!
Paul Says:11/1/2007 6:58:12 PM Great show -- I just started listening. To prove I was paying attention, I spotted your illicit use of "so" (which you critique in another episode) in this episode, as in "I'm so sorry—the horror—because that is one of the instances where it's not OK to end a sentence with a preposition!" :)
Lauren Hightower Says:10/16/2007 9:34:13 AM Great episode!
Mark Says:9/25/2007 2:50:39 PM The important point here is that grammarians are pretty much irrelevant to everyday life - they're pretty much like archaeologists, they like to think they're doing something important but really they're only commenting on things which have already passed their sell by date.
William Says:9/21/2007 8:36:14 PM `Grammatical' is improper English. The correct adjective form of `grammar' is `grammatic'. `Grammatically' is the correct adjective form.
ligneus Says:9/20/2007 8:22:29 AM "What did you bring that book I didn't want to be read to out of up for?"
Doug Rosbury Says:9/18/2007 9:50:19 PM grammatical rules Are only a guide. In my opinion, people should not be held responsible for carrying the torch of grammatical correctness. There is a certain charm in colloquialisms which Give the language color and humor. Don't put me in a prison of correctness. Doug Rosbury
B_allW@yz_unKn0wn Says:9/18/2007 2:51:04 PM i understand what everyone else is saying but i didnt even read it but if i did i would leave you saying its always important to read what you talk about...

My old friend Douglas Hofstadter is chuckling away.

The Well-Suitedness of the Book

Dead Beat, as you know, has that old streak of engineering in him, and so has for years wondered how e-books or e-magazines or e-papers should work. About eight years ago he decided that it would require a flexible screen. Imagine the cover of a magazine - two sheets/four pages. Each page would be an individual screen which could download a single page of the book/mag/paper. In this way the reader could still turn pages, have the flexibility of paper, in other words the emotional expreience. Then he wondered would a single flexible sheet do: one leaf/two pages. Then he wondered would one page do AS LONG AS IT WAS FLEXIBLE.

So what's with the flexible?

Well, he knows reading a newspaer off a screen while you are sitting at a desk is not a relaxing experience always. Nor is it necessary relaxing to read it from a laptop. Hence the flexibility. Well, like all Dead Beat's great inventions (e.g. French Fry vending machine) someone else got up off their ar#e and created it.

But now let us add this into the frey:

Amazon.com , the world's largest Web retailer, said Monday it will begin selling an electronic book reader with wireless access, the latest attempt to build consumer interest in portable reading devices.

Wireless access, based on the cellphone broadband technology EVDO, is built into the 10-ounce, thin white device. Downloading content does not require a computer and takes less than a minute for a full-length book. The $399 electronic book device will allow downloads of more than 90,000 book titles, blogs, magazines and newspapers.

"The question is, can you improve upon something as highly evolved and well-suited to its task as the book? And if so, how?," Amazon.com Chief Executive Jeff Bezos said at a press conference in New York.

There it is. That's Dead Beat's point, thank you J.B.

The question is, can you improve upon something as highly evolved and well-suited to its task as the book?