A Player to Be Named Later

Some of the busiest people in show business don’t exist:

  • The name George Spelvin is traditionally used in American theater programs when an actor’s name would otherwise appear twice.
  • In the London theater, Walter Plinge gets the credit when a part has not been cast.
  • On BBC television dramas in the 1970s, David Agnew was credited when contractual reasons prevented a writer’s name from being used.
  • When a Hollywood director no longer wants credit for a film, the name Alan Smithee is used.

That last one is such an open secret — “Smithee” even directed a Whitney Houston video — that the Directors Guild finally abandoned it in favor of random pseudonyms, starting with the 2000 James Spader bomb Supernova, directed by “Thomas Lee” (Walter Hill).

| Entertainment · Trivia

Screaming at the Ants

Euphemisms for vomiting:

  • Un-eating
  • Number three
  • Vector-spewing
  • Launching lunch
  • Jackson Pollock
  • Eating backwards
  • Parking the tiger
  • Making a crustless pizza
  • Bringing it up for a vote
  • Cooking up a pavement pizza
  • Driving the Buick to Europe
  • Alan’s psychedelic breakfast
  • Yawning for the hearing impaired
  • Yodelling to the porcelain megaphone
  • Talking to God on the big white telephone
  • Paying homage to the Irishman Huey O’Rourke
  • Calling Huey (or Ralph) on the commode-a-phone

Also: horking, yakking, yarfing, yorxing. “Grasp the subject,” wrote Cato, “the words will follow.”

| Language

Sand Castle

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sand_sculpture.jpg

One by one, the simple amusements of my youth are being co-opted by geeks and refined into punishing sciences.

Only purists, for example, still build sand castles with shovels and hand packing. The vanguard have recruited all the tools of modern engineering, including building forms and heavy machinery.

Guinness started recording the world’s longest sand sculptures in 1987, and that spawned even greater creativity — and competitiveness. In 1998 Dave Henderson built a 33-foot castle at the New York State Fairgrounds that weighed 412 tons. Not to be outdone, other artists started turning out likenesses of Einstein, life-size pickup trucks, and a rather creditable Eeyore.

Today, at a championship competition, you might find works inspired by Picasso and dream imagery.

Where will it end? With a giant bucket and enough water, we could build a giant ziggurat in the Sahara. And there’s no danger from high tide …

| Entertainment

The Shadow Knows

Some secret identities:

  • The Scarlet Pimpernel: Sir Percy Blakeney
  • Zorro: Don Diego De La Vega
  • The Lone Ranger: John Reid
  • The Phantom: Kit Walker
  • Captain Marvel: Billy Batson

It’s been pointed out that Superman pretends to be Clark Kent, but Peter Parker pretends to be Spider-Man. If you have two identities, either one can be “secret.”

| Trivia

The Anagrammy Awards

The Anagrammy Awards is a monthly anagram competition. March winners:

  • THE CRIME INVESTIGATOR = HE INTERROGATES VICTIM
  • A TRAINED SUSHI CHEF = HE’S A TUNA-FISH DICER
  • ASTEROID THREATS = DISASTER TO EARTH

My favorite from the hall of fame — this:

TO BE OR NOT TO BE: THAT IS THE QUESTION; WHETHER ‘TIS NOBLER IN THE MIND TO SUFFER THE SLINGS AND ARROWS OF OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE

can be rearranged to spell

IN ONE OF THE BARD’S BEST-THOUGHT-OF TRAGEDIES, OUR INSISTENT HERO, HAMLET, QUERIES ON TWO FRONTS ABOUT HOW LIFE TURNS ROTTEN.

Can’t beat that.

| Language

The Sistine Chapel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Sistine.left.600pix.jpg

“Without having seen the Sistine Chapel one can form no appreciable idea of what one man is capable of achieving.” Goethe’s remark is kind but romantic — Michelangelo’s frescoes ennoble the human spirit, but they also illustrate the dangers of scope creep.

The painter signed on in 1508 to repaint the ceiling, at first with simple golden stars on a blue sky. Lacking a project manager, he agreed to add 12 figures, and the slide began. Before he was done there would be more than 300 figures, in scenes depicting the Creation, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and the Last Judgment.

As the scale grew, problems multiplied. The Judgment drew objections from Cardinal Carafa, who was scandalized because now a fresco was showing human genitals inside the Vatican. And the artist was forced to make do with male models, because females were too rare and costly.

In short, the Renaissance was plagued by all the same devils that dog modern projects. At least Michelangelo met them philosophically and saw the project through. “If people only knew how hard I work to gain my mastery,” he said, “it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all.”

| History

Yed, Bleen, Grue

Suppose I show you an emerald and ask whether it’s green or grue. It’s “grue” if it’s green today but will turn blue next Halloween.

Which is it? That’s the “new problem of induction,” according to philosopher of science Nelson Goodman. It’s a big problem: Scientists basically assume that the universe behaves consistently over time, but there’s no logical reason to expect this.

A more immediate usage: “Yed” is the color of a traffic signal when the last legal driver manages to get through the intersection. “The existence of the color yed is hotly debated in philosophy, and opposing viewpoints are often taken by traffic cops and vehicle operators.”

| Science & Math