Published October 2, 2009 | 
Happy birthday, dear Julius Groucho.
Julius Henry Marx was the sharp-witted middle child of five brothers. His mother Minnie favored the handsome, fair-haired older brothers and the adorable younger two, but she apparently thought less of young Julius. The dreamy, slightly wall-eyed boy loved books and music, but he had to drop out of school early to help support the family. In later life he read voraciously and corresponded with authors and intellectuals like Carl Sandburg and T. S. Eliot. His own writing style ranged from the trenchant to the brilliantly absurd.
Depending on the source, he was a moody, mean-tempered skinflint who drove his wives to drink, or just a moody skinflint. His woman-chasing may have been a joke, but his misogyny apparently wasn’t. He was married and divorced three times. After growing up in poverty, he earned a fortune–and lost $800,000 in the big stock-market crash that heralded the Depression. Afterwards he never stopped being obsessed with money. In the 1950s he stopped by the New York Stock Exchange to entertain the dazzled stockbrokers — an act that literally shut down all Wall Street trading for fifteen minutes. He was determined to get his $800,000 worth.
He had hit shows in vaudeville, on Broadway, in the movies, on radio, and on television. He wrote several books–and yes, he actually wrote them. He died at 86, more than 30 years ago, and he is still one of the funniest men who ever lived.
Many Groucho Quotations
Childhood
Although it is generally known, I think it’s about time to announce that I was born at a very early age.
I’ve got the brain of a four year old. I’ll bet he was glad to be rid of it.
A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five.
My mother loved children—she would have given anything if I had been one.
Because we were a kid act, we traveled at half-fare, despite the fact that we were all around 20. Minnie insisted we were 13. “That kid of yours is in the dining car smoking a cigar,” the conductor told her. “And another one is in the washroom shaving.” Minnie shook her head sadly. “They grow so fast . . . ”
I married your mother because I wanted children; imagine my disappointment when you came along.
Social Commentary
I read in the newspapers they are going to have 30 minutes of intellectual stuff on television every Monday from 7:30 to 8. to educate America. They couldn’t educate America if they started at 6:30.
Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.
No one is completely unhappy at the failure of his best friend.
All people are born alike—except Republicans and Democrats.
In America you can go on the air and kid the politicians, and the politicians can go on the air and kid the people.
Politics doesn’t make strange bedfellows—marriage does.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
[when told that a swimming pool was off-limits to Jews] My son is half-Jewish; can he wade in up to his knees?
Why should I care about posterity? What’s posterity ever done for me?
Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.
Money
Money frees you from doing things you dislike. Since I dislike doing nearly everything, money is handy.
Money will not make you happy, and happy will not make you money.
Blood’s not thicker than money.
While money can’t buy happiness, it certainly lets you choose your own form of misery.
I worked myself up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty.
If he (Chico) made ten thousand dollars a day, he’d spend ten thousand dollars a day. I don’t mind that. What I do mind is that he still sleeps better than I do.
The Arts
From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it.
I find television very educational. Every time someone switches it on I go into another room and read a good book.
Humor is reason gone mad.
Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book, and does.
Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted.
I didn’t like the play, but then I saw it under adverse conditions—the curtain was up.
I was so long writing my review that I never got around to reading the book.
I can’t understand why you don’t get any mail from me. Perhaps it’s because I haven’t been writing.
I write by ear. I tried writing with the typewriter, but I found it too unwieldy.
If you’ve heard this story before, don’t stop me, because I’d like to hear it again.
My favorite poem is the one that starts ‘Thirty days hath September’ because it actually tells you something.
Anybody who doesn’t like this book is healthy.
I’ll put off reading Lolita for six more years until she turns 18.
We’ll meet at the theater tonight. I’ll hold your seat till you get there; once you get there, you’re on your own.
Laugh and the world laughs with you. Cry and you’re probably watching the wrong channel.
Fellow Entertainers
[after viewing Samson and Delilah (1949) starring Hedy Lamarr and Victor Mature] Well, there’s just one problem. No picture can hold my interest where the leading man’s tits are bigger than the leading lady’s.
I’d have liked to have gone to bed with Jean Harlow. She was a beautiful broad. The fellow who married her was impotent and he killed himself. I would have done the same thing.
[on Bob Hope] Hope? Hope is not a comedian. He just translates what others write for him.
[On Charles Chaplin]: The greatest compliment I ever got was from Chaplin. He came up to me and said ëI wish I could talk like you on the screen.’ I said ëI think you’re doing all right.’ He had made $50 million by that point. He was the best comedian we ever had.
Jerry Lewis hasn’t made me laugh since he left Dean Martin.
[asked in 1975 if he’d seen any recent movies] I saw Jaws. But I think it would have been funnier if a guppy had swallowed the boat instead of a shark.
[on Margaret Dumont] She was a wonderful woman. She was the same off the stage as she was on it—always the stuffy, dignified matron. And the funny thing about her was she never understood the jokes. At the end of Duck Soup Margaret says to me, “What are you doing. Rufus?”. And I say, “I am fighting for your honor, which is more than you ever did.” Later she asked me what I meant by that.
People
My experience is that people are most likely to listen to reason when in bed.
Years ago, I tried to top everybody, but I don’t anymore. I realized it was killing conversation. When you’re always trying for a topper you aren’t really listening. It ruins communication.
No man goes before his time—unless the boss leaves early.
I drink to make other people interesting.
Animals
A black cat crossing your path signifies that the animal is going somewhere.
A moose is an animal with horns on the front of his head and a hunting lodge wall on the back of it.
While shooting elephants in Africa, I found the tusks very difficult to remove. But in Alabama, the Tuscaloosa…
Women and Sex
Women should be obscene and not heard.
Only one man in a thousand is a leader of men, the other 999 follow women.
How do you feel about women’s rights? I like either side of them.
Behind every successful man stands a woman. And behind her stands his wife.
I remember the first time I had sex—I kept the receipt.
Whoever named it necking was a poor judge of anatomy.
A man’s only as old as the woman he feels.
I wish you’d keep my hands to yourself.
Groucho: You know I think you’re the most beautiful woman in the world?
Woman: Really?
Groucho: No, but I don’t mind lying if it gets me somewhere.
Funny, I’ve met a lot of pin-up girls, but I’ve never been able to pin one down.
Man does not control his own fate. The women in his life do that for him.
A woman is an occasional pleasure but a cigar is always a smoke.
Anyone who says he can see through women is missing a lot.
Marriage and Divorce
Will you marry me? Do you have any money? Answer the second question first.
Marry me and I’ll never look at another horse!
What do you say the three of us get married: You girls have everything, you’re short and tall, and slim and stout, and blonde and brunette. And that’s just the kind of girl I crave!
One of the best hearing aids a man can have is an attentive wife.
Wives are people who feel they don’t dance enough.
Some people claim that marriage interferes with romance. There’s no doubt about it. Anytime you have a romance, your wife is bound to interfere.
I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury.
Alimony is like buying hay for a dead horse.
In Hollywood, brides keep the bouquets and throw away the groom.
Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who wants to live in an institution?
Sickness, Aging, and Death
I’m not feeling very well—I need a doctor immediately. Ring the nearest golf course.
A hospital bed is a parked taxi with the meter running.
Age is not a particularly interesting subject. Anyone can get old. All you have to do is live long enough.
I’m going to Iowa for an award. Then I’m appearing at Carnegie Hall, it’s sold out. Then I’m sailing to France to be honored by the French government. I’d give it all up for one erection.
[in the late 1960s, on how it felt to be an elder statesman of comedy] Like an old jerk.
I intend to live forever, or die trying.
Either this man is dead or my watch has stopped.
I wish to be cremated. One tenth of my ashes shall be given to my agent, as written in our contract.
Bury me next to a straight man.
The Secret of Life
The first thing which I can record concerning myself is, that I was born. These are wonderful words. This life, to which neither time nor eternity can bring diminution—this everlasting living soul, began. My mind loses itself in these depths.
The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.
It isn’t necessary to have relatives in Kansas City in order to be unhappy.
Learn from the mistakes of others. You can never live long enough to make them all yourself.
There’s one way to find out if a man is honest—ask him. If he says, “Yes,” you know he is a crook.
The trouble with writing a book about yourself is that you can’t fool around. If you write about someone else, you can stretch the truth from here to Finland. If you write about yourself the slightest deviation makes you realize instantly that there may be honor among thieves, but you are just a dirty liar.
Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.
Threats and Insults
Do you suppose I could buy back my introduction to you?
Don’t point that beard at me, it might go off.
Gentlemen, Chicolini here may talk like an idiot, and look like an idiot, but don’t let that fool you. He really is an idiot.
I’m 42 around the chest, 52 around the waist, 92 around the golf course and a nuisance around the house.
Why, I’d horse-whip you if I had a horse.
Next time I see you, remind me not to talk to you.
I was going to thrash them within an inch of their lives, but I didn’t have a tape measure.
I have a mind to join a club and beat you over the head with it.
I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn’t it.
Why don’t you go home to your wife? Better yet, I’ll go home to your wife, and outside of the improvement, she won’t notice any difference.
Don’t look now, but there’s one man too many in this room and I think it’s you.
I have nothing but respect for you—and not much of that.
Absurdist
Go, and never darken my towels again.
I could dance with you until the cows come home. On second thought I’d rather dance with the cows until you come home.
I don’t have a photograph, but you can have my footprints. They’re upstairs in my socks.
Policeman: A hermit, eh? Then why’s your table set for four?
Groucho: That’s nothing. My alarm clock is set for eight.
Before I speak, I have something important to say.
Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
I’m leaving because the weather is too good. I hate London when it’s not raining.
If I held you any closer I would be on the other side of you.
One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I’ll never know.
Well, Art is Art, isn’t it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now you tell me what you know.
You’re a woman who’s been getting nothing but dirty breaks. Well, we can clean and tighten your brakes, but you’ll have to stay in the garage all night.
Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?
Room service? Send up a larger room.
dropping acid with Paul Krassner
He told me about one of his favorite contestants “a gentleman with white hair, on in years but a chipper fellow. I inquired as to what he did to retain his sunny disposition. “Well, I’ll tell you, Groucho,” he says “every morning I get up and I make a choice to be happy that day.”
We had long periods of silence and of listening to music. I was accustomed to playing rock ‘n’ roll while tripping, but the record collection here was all classical and Broadway show albums. After we heard the Bach “Cantata No. 7 Groucho said, “I may be Jewish, but I was seeing the most beautiful visions of Gothic cathedrals. Do you think Bach knew he was doing that?”
There was a point when our conversation somehow got into a negative space. Groucho was equally bitter about institutions such as marriage (“like quicksand”) and individuals such as Lyndon Johnson (“potato-head”). Eventually, I asked, “What gives you hope? Groucho thought for a moment …. . Then he said just one word out loud: “People.”
After a while, he started chuckling to himself. I hesitated to interrupt his reverie. Finally he spoke: “I’m really getting quite a kick out of this notion of playing God like a dirty old man in Skidoo. You wanna know why? Do you realize that irreverence and reverence are the same thing?”
“Always?”
“If they’re not, then it’s a misuse of your power to make people laugh”
And right after he said that, his eyes began to tear.When he came back from peeing, he said, “Everybody is waiting for miracles to happen. The human body is a goddam miracle.”
He mentioned, “I had a little crush on Marilyn Monroe when we were making Love Happy – I remember I got a hard-on just talking to her on the set.”
During a little snack: “I never thought eating a fig would be the biggest thrill of my life.”
He held and smelled a cigar for a long time but never smoked it.
“Everybody has their own Laurel and Hardy,” he mused. “A miniature Laurel and Hardy, one on each shoulder. Your little Oliver Hardy bawls you out-he says, ‘Well, this is a fine mess you’ve gotten us into.’ And your little Stan Laurel gets all weepy -”Oh, Ollie, I couldn’t help it, I’m sorry, I did the best I could. . . ‘ “
Groucho and cigars, by his son Arthur.
Quotes about Groucho from his fans, including Terry Southern, T. S. Eliot, George Burns, George Bernard Shaw, and Candice Bergen.
The young Jon Carroll interviews the elderly Groucho.
Published August 31, 2009 | Warning: Spoilers for Matt Ruff’s Bad Monkeys and James Ellroy’s The Black Dahlia.
I should probably not read Matt Ruff while on vacation. I found Bad Monkeys extremely disturbing. The main character has a violent background and some things to feel seriously guilty about. She leads a purposeless, drug-ridden life until recruited for a secret organization that fights evil. From then on the book is a hall of mirrors, and the apparent meaning of all the events is constantly shifting.
One reason the spygame plot (evil Troop versus fighting-evil Organization) bothered me is that good and evil don’t work that way. It’s not a question of which side you join. Some of the greatest evils of the past century were done by people who thought they were on the side of virtue, fighting evil.
What matters is what you do. How you do it. And although Ruff explicitly makes the point that otherwise good people can do evil, he doesn’t allow moral complexity its full scope.
James Ellroy‘s Black Dahlia is a compelling mess of a book. I never got the sense that the author was in control of his material — in fact, it was a runaway train. It also has some weird commonalities with Bad Monkeys. In each, a main character is carrying a huge burden of guilt for the disappearance of a sibling. Both books are meditations on good and evil. Also, they both have so many false endings that you can’t keep track of them.
Published June 24, 2009 | To the writers of fantastic fiction who broadened my childhood world.
Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, whose The Little Lame Prince gave me a traveling cloak and a world to see.
Rod Serling, whose brilliant Twilight Zone scripts were published as anthologies, and who promised me a chance at least of justice.
C. S. Lewis, who, on my seventh birthday, took me out of the silent planet and to Perelandra. I was 14 before I got the third book in the trilogy, which was just as well.
Edgar Allen Poe, who showed me I wasn’t the only one with a demon in my view.
Bram Stoker, whose Dracula is still a masterpiece of form as well as terror, and whose “The Judge’s House” is still terrifying.
The great Victorian and Edwardian supernatural writers: E. Nesbit, M.R. James, Henry James, Sheridan Le Fanu, Oliver Onions, F. Marion Crawford, Violet Hunt, E. F. Benson, Cynthia Asquith, Saki, William Hope Hodgson, Margaret Irwin, and so many more.
The editors–particularly Alfred Hitchcock, Seon Manley, and Gogo Lewis–who brought those stories from the dusty vaults of long-forgotten magazines into modern print.
Barbara Michaels, whose Ammie, Come Home said, “Father hurt” in a voice I needed to hear. It is one of the best modern ghost stories.
The great classic SF writers–Theodore Sturgeon foremost among them–who showed up in the early anthologies I found. (Groff Conklin’s anthologies were great.) And Harlan Ellison, whose Again, Dangerous Visions introduced me to Ursula K. Le Guin and my all-time great love, Joanna Russ. Le Guin and Russ are the Empress and High Priestess of SF/F, the two great pillars of New Wave SF.
All the people who carelessly left books where I could find them.
Published May 19, 2009 | From Antick Musings, publishing light-bulb jokes: A few samples:
Q. How many copyeditors does it take to change a lightbulb?
A. The last time this question was asked, it involved art directors. Is the difference intentional? Should one or the other instance be changed? It seems inconsistent.Q. How many publishers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A. Three. One to screw it in, two to hold down the author.
What are your favorite lightbulb jokes?
Published May 14, 2009 | Joe Decker is having a 72-hour sale on nature photography.
Now, Joe is something of a cross between Ansel Adams and Galen Rowell. In other words, a hellaciously fine photographer of nature. And this sale includes many of his best pictures of glaciers, icebergs, moonrise, and the motion of light on water. Some are traditional landscapes. Others show the world almost as an abstraction, a texture, a pattern.
Published May 13, 2009 | The Unlikely Events of a Water Landing: New Photos From Flight 1549. Fascinating chronicle of the salvage effort by a photographer on the inside. It shows the whole process of pulling the plane out of the Hudson. Very, very cool.
Bay Area Coolness, Episode 43,279. They’re building a rocket ship in Oakland. Yes, you will be able to visit it. And when I say “they,” I do not mean NASA or even Pixar. I mean some independent artists. Link courtesy rmjwell.
The air that I breathe, AKA Hazmat Crisis at AT&T. This article is being clipped or printed and posted in office kitchens all over the US.
Published April 24, 2009 | Movie Stars Who Die the Most. Not an article for people who hate spoilers, because it lists the movies in which characters die.
Also, the list includes only male actors currently working. No actresses at all, which is a real pity. And no Bogart, Cagney, Peter Lorre….
Nor does it include Sean Bean, who apparently has a clause in all his contracts that would force the studios to quadruple his pay should be survive to the end credits.
Or Samuel L. Jackson, who is both a great actor and a star, and who dies a lot.
So maybe it includes only male actors currently working who have a movie coming out soon enough that they’re on the list to be mentioned in Premiere. A title too long to fit the marquee.
Also, I myself would have included the great bit of trivia that John Wayne died in only one of his films — the last.
So what actresses have died the most often on film? What are the greatest death scenes in film history? What movies have more than one great death scene?
For the last category, I’d say that Repo Man has at least three great (and hilarious) death scenes:
- “People just explode.”
- “I blame society.”
- “I showed them — I had a lobotomy.”
Published April 23, 2009 | My brain seems to be crawling at quarter-speed today. Time-lapse photography might well show that it’s attempting to give me the finger.
However, these time-lapse photographs show amazing natural events. A lunar eclipse, a thunderstorm, a wildfire, growing mushrooms, a rotting apple, and more.
Some things take time. Others are fast, like Tweets, but can do a lot of damage as they go by.
The five worst Twitters ever. By worst they mean something like “causing most collateral damage.” Link courtesy zem42.
If you slow down high-speed phenomena, you can see extraordinary things.
Posted in Arts, Natural History, photography, Technology | 
photography, social media | 
Leave a commentPublished April 23, 2009 | Sonnet 65
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o’ersways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O! how shall summer’s honey breath hold out,
Against the wrackful siege of battering days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong but Time decays?
O fearful meditation! where, alack,
Shall Time’s best jewel from Time’s chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
O! none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.–William Shakespeare
You still shine bright, 445 years after your birth.
Published April 22, 2009 | Poetry Month is ending soon, but (in addition to today’s poem), I’ll leave you with recommendations for two fine novels about poets, both by John Crowley.
Christa (Kit) Malone, college student and aspiring poet, studies with and helps to translate the work of Innokenti Isayevitch Falin, a distinguished Russian poet in exile. It’s 1962, and the Cold War is at its height. As teacher and student learn from each other, the political tensions grow toward the Cuban missile crisis.
OK, there is no way to summarize this novel. It is as tough and delicate as porcelain, shapely as a peach. Kit is both flawed and talented, and she matures as she copes with loss, grief, guilt, learning, betrayal, and love. Falin speaks with the unmistakable accents of the Slav living in translation, and from a wholly believable history.
The author writes with a feather-light, effective touch of the issues that were about to blow the country apart. He explores the problems of language — context, translation, even finding the way to speak — while subtly revealing tragedies and great joy. The story accumulates feeling as it goes along, and its narrative tensions grow more and more taut.
Occasionally one encounters a perfect poem. Much less often does one find a perfect work of fiction, whose form, phrasing, and content could not be improved.* This, to my mind, is one of the few.
Lord Byron’s Novel: The Evening Land, John Crowley
Lord Byron never wrote a novel. If he had, he would have written the story at the center of this one: a tale of passion, hereditary curses, courageous women, star-crossed men.
Around his manuscript are other stories: about the modern researchers seeking to decode it; about Ada Lovelace, Byron’s daughter; about a Byronic film director.
Crowley never makes the common mistake of confusing Byron the man with the characters in his poetry. His Lordship’s manners were urbane, Augustan, generous, idealistic, and warm, and all that is shown in the Byron manuscript. Having extensively researched Byron, I was able to spot dozens of charming allusions to his life and work. And the voice is Byron’s own, the same voice in his letters, journals, and collected conversations. It’s an extraordinary performance.
Byron himself is so vivid none of the other characters can quite live up to him, but the book is well worth reading anyway. I came away from it feeling glad that someone could speak in Byron’s human, humane voice. Those qualities matter.
*Peter Beagle’s The Last Unicorn is one such book. Rachel McKenzie’s The Wine of Astonishment is another. Shirley Hazzard’s The Bay of Noon.