"A man is only as old as the woman he can feel inside of him trying to express herself."

A translation of the French that was itself a translation of "You’re only as old as the woman you feel" — an old Groucho Marx joke — which had been given as an example of an untranslatable sentence.

Prop 8 ruling from the 9th Circuit is expected momentarily.

At 10 a.m. Pacific Time, noon Central.

UPDATE: The court holds that the ban on same-sex marriage violates equal protection.

AND: Here's the opinion [PDF].

ALSO: What Prop 8 did, the court writes, was take away the designation "marriage," and that word matters:

We are excited to see someone ask, "Will you marry me?", whether on bended knee or in text splashed across a stadium Jumbotron. Certainly it would not have the same effect to see "Will you enter into a registered domestic partnership with me?". Groucho Marx's one-liner, "Marriage is a wonderful institution... but who wants to live in an institution?" would lack its punch if the word "marriage" were replaced with the alternative phrase. So too with Shakespeare's "A young man married is a man that's marr'd," Lincoln's "Marriage is neither heaven no hell, it is simply purgatory," and Sinatra's "A man doesn't know what happiness is until he's married. By then it's too late." We see tropes like "marrying for love" versus "marrying for money" played out again and again in our films and literature because of the recognized importance of the marriage relationship. Had Marilyn Monroe's film been called How to Register a Domestic Partnership with a Millionaire, it would not have conveyed the same meaning as did her famous movie....

You get the idea. The judges are old. I mean... marriage — even just the word — matters.

"Possibly the biggest gap between how much I loved it as a kid, and how unwatchable I'd find it now of any show."

From a discussion of "Welcome Back Kotter," on the occasion of the death of actor Robert Hegyes (who played Epstein).

On his website, Hegyes wrote that he modeled the swaggering, skirt-chasing Epstein after Chico Marx, whom he played in a national touring production of "A Night With Groucho." He was a big fan of the Marx Brothers: "They were immigrant Jews, and I was an immigrant Italian. Groucho, Harpo, Chico, Gummo, and Zeppo were intellectuals ... They all played the piano and took music lessons, and they were all juvenile delinquents; I could definitely relate."

It's sweet to see that connection to the Marx Brothers tradition of ethnic characters played by actors whose own ethnicity is at odds with the character's ethnicity. Heyges came from Hungarian and Italian ancestry and the Epstein character was Jewish and Puerto Rican.

"Welcome Back Kotter" wasn't a show I watched. I was in my 20s in the 1970s, and didn't watch much TV in those years. It's the TV shows of the 50s and 60s that are seared into my memory. Are there shows that I truly loved that I'd find really unwatchable now? Maybe "The Red Skelton Show."

"Perhaps it was Zeppo’s ardent pursuit with dinner invitations and flowers or the new Thunderbird convertible he bought for me."

"Or was it the time he stood behind a group of strangers in an elevator and pulled faces until I was laughing so hard I had to get off? Not only did Zeppo have the caustic wit of the Marx Brothers but he made fun of himself rather than of those around him. I think that may have been why he was always given the role of romantic lead while his brothers insulted him."

Am I the only person who bought Barbara Sinatra's "Lady Blue Eyes: My Life with Frank" because I wanted to read what she has to say about about Zeppo Marx?

ADDED: After Chico Marx's funeral:

Crammed into the living room with scores of mourners, I noticed a strange woman staring at me. Zeppo noticed too and asked someone who she was. It was his first wife, Marion, a former Ziegfield girl he’d divorced seven years earlier, five years before he’d married me. A week later, I was playing tennis with Dinah Shore at the Racquet Club when I spotted Marion watching me in the same eerie way. I asked Dinah to introduce us. Marion was a little strange, but I think she just wanted to check me out. I felt sorry for her. She’d raised their adopted sons alone, and Zeppo showed little or no interest in them or her, it seemed. What really bothered me though was that he hadn’t even recognized the woman he’d been married to for twenty-seven years. 

Raising money for Bloggingheads by auctioning the censorship of Ann Althouse.

In the words of the Marx Brothers...



... tomorrow, I leave! That's worth about... a million dollars!

They had to shoot Osama bin Laden because he was not naked.

"Being naked was the only way Osama Bin Laden could have avoided being killed, it emerged today. The elite U.S. Navy Seals team that killed him was told to assume he was wearing a suicide vest if he was clothed, according to a briefing given to a congressional aide."

But he was in his pajamas, so, no matter what he did, he was doomed.

ADDED: Instapundit links, saying: "OTHER NIGHT I SHOT OSAMA IN HIS PAJAMAS. How I wound up in his pajamas I’ll never know...." That flickered through my head too.

The most annoying blogger.

I'm being polled about — among other things — who is the most annoying blogger. That's a good thing, right?

"By instinct and archetype, comedy is usually phallic..."

"... Chaplin has his cane, Harpo his horn, Groucho his cigar, and Dame Edna her gladioli, with which to poke, probe, and goose the world. Pee-wee, by contrast, is the comedian of non-phallic fun."

IN THE COMMENTS: Deborah said:

Unless Pee-wee himself is a phallic symbol. Of sorts:

"Now, as then, Pee-wee is a round-shouldered, knock-kneed picture of arrested development. His voice is high and strangulated, his laugh shrill and affectless, a sound that comes from the throat, not the belly. He occasionally lets out a scream of fear or a wail of loathing; when he throws himself on the floor in a tantrum, he adopts a kind of fetal position."

Yeah. Good point. The name too. Pee Wee. Wee wee. Pee pee.

"A man was arrested after stealing author Jonathan Franzen's glasses from the writer and demanding a ransom of £100,000 ($158,808) at a book launch."

"Police said a helicopter was called to chase the culprit, who jumped into the Serpentine lake in London. The 27-year-old has since been released with no further action being taken and the glasses have been recovered."

A helicopter? I mean, I know Franzen's book — "Freedom" — is considered tremendously important, but... it was a pair of glasses. Why chase the guy with a helicopter?

Is it because those glasses are part of his signature look? Quick! Which one is Franzen?



Without the glasses... he could be... just anybody.

Some book journal editor who was at the scene of the crime, said: "It was frankly quite bizarre. Considering the seriousness of Franzen's work, this is the last thing anyone expected at his book launch."

Considering the seriousness of Franzen's work! I don't understand literary-journalist logic. It's exactly seriousness that inspires absurd prankish tweaking. (If you don't understand my logic, you need to watch a few Marx Brothers movies.)

"Will you quit annoying me?"

That line appears at 1:58 in this clip from the great Marx Brothers movie "Duck Soup":



It's a funny scene with all sorts of things in it, such as Harpo surreptitiously cutting off the man's pocket and using it as a bag for his peanuts. (Yeah, count the phallic symbols.) But that line — "Will you quit annoying me?" — has stuck with me for many years as a particular type of funniness. I was IM-ing my son John about it this morning.

Me:

do you remember the line "stop annoying me" --- finding that really funny? what movie and how would you explain why we thought it was so funny?

John:

"would you quit annoying me!!!"

Duck Soup [+ link to the above clip]

similar to W.C. Fields in It's a Gift saying, "I hate you"*

In a comedy you expect wit, wisecracks, innuendo .... So it's funny if someone blatantly says the obvious thing you've been watching for several minutes.

Me:

thanks!!!

it's the element of surprise, but the surprising thing is it's flatfootedness

it's surprisingly ordinary

John:

Also, it's funny for someone to openly say what they think of someone as if there are no social inhibitions

Reminds me of a scene in The Office (last episode of season 2) where Michael Scott is talking to everyone in the office about they're going to have a gambling night in the warehouse....

Michael Scott: Oh, and another fun thing. We, at the end of the night, are going to give the check to an actual group of Boy Scouts. Right, Toby? We're gonna...

Toby: Actually, I didn't think it was appropriate to invite children since it's, uh, you know, there's gambling and alcohol. And it's in our dangerous warehouse. And it's a school night. And, you know, Hooters is catering. Is that enou-is that enough? Should I keep going?

Michael Scott: Why are you the way that you are? Honestly, every time I try to do something fun or exciting, you make it not... that way. I hate... so much about the things that you choose to be.

Ha ha.

Speaking of analyzing exactly why something is funny, I put a lot of thought into the title of that blog post last night with the praying mantis. Originally, I had "Non Compos Mentis Campus Mantis," then, thinking it might be off-putting to start in Latin, I made it "Campus Mantis: Non Compos Mentis." Then, this morning, I was sorry I switched it. "Non Compos Mentis Campus Mantis" seemed much better — kind of like a 3 Stooges title. Looking at all the 3 Stooges titles, I'm not really sure why.

_________

* The key segment is at 4:40:



CORRECTION: "Praying" changed to "campus" 3 times.

Welcome to The Glad Hand Café.

Tell me about your books, your action figures, your comic heroes, your favorite slang and satirical definitions.

"Whatever it is, I'm against it."

Ruth Anne found the YouTube clips for the 2 Marx Brothers scenes I mentioned in yesterday's vlog.

A little Friday afternoon vlog.

Just answering your questions... from the previous post. Trying to do it without edits, but the phone rang....



ADDED: Here's the song I mention.

MORE: Ruth Anne found the Marx Brothers clips.

The pill that increases women's sex drive and decreases their appetite. It's a sex + diet pill!

Yeah, they're trying to invent it.

The Edinburgh team, led by Professor Robert Millar, have been looking at the properties Type 2 Gonadotrophin-releasing hormone.

When it was given to monkeys, they displayed mating behaviour such as tongue-flicking and eyebrow-raising to the males, while female shrews displayed their feelings via "rump presentation and tail wagging".

But the animals also ate around a third less food than they normally would.

Tongue-flicking and eyebrow-raising, eh? I look forward to the day when the world is full of skinny women who seem to be imitating Groucho Marx and William F. Buckley simultaneously. Sexy!

Goodbye, Kitty.

Kitty Carlisle Hart has died: "the supremely elegant actress, singer, arts advocate and TV personality" was 96.

I remember seeing her all the time, back in the 1960s, on the TV show "To Tell the Truth." You can see a whole segment of the show here with the panelists -- including Kitty in her glory -- trying to guess which of three contestants is really the whale rider. (Embedding is disable, so you have to click over to see it. Kitty first appears at about 3:00.)

It was nice to see her, 20 years ago, in the fine Woody Allen movie, "Radio Days." "Radio Days" was a reverie about the past, and I feel a twinge seeing how long ago "Radio Days" itself was. Kitty sang "They're Either Too Young or Too Old," and I can't find a YouTube clip of that, but I can find the song, sung back in its original time, 1943, by Bette Davis. I hope it doesn't violate some rule to bring a superior diva into another's obit post:



ADDED: In the comments, Madison Man reminds me that Kitty played the ingenue --Rosa Castaldi -- in the great Marx Brothers movie "A Night at the Opera." You can see -- and hear -- quite a bit of her in this clip:



Alone with a sigh of romance!

Oh, there she is with both Chico and Harpo jumping up on her at the same time. That young woman must have been pretty strong. You could almost predict that she'd live to be 96.

Groucho and the medium.

If you have TimesSelect, you can read Dick Cavett's blog, which has a long post today about ghost stories. Here's an anecdote:

Groucho [Marx] could always go unrecognized in public, thanks to the painted-on mustache he wore onstage. This allowed him to, as he put it “go anywhere and mingle with the common man in all his dreariness.” Back then, there was a prominent trance medium holding forth, and her devoted disciples (sometimes spelled s-u-c-k-e-r-s) solemnly offered to take the man born Julius Marx with them to a séance. Always intellectually curious, Groucho was glad to be asked along — though he told me he was “vaguely insulted” when his new friends solemnly cautioned him to show the proper reverence. “I’m not a clown 24 hours,” he said. “I can also be serious.”

The séance was held in the darkened parlor of some wealthy believer’s apartment. Groucho reported a heavy air of sanctity about the place, “and not entirely from the incense.” Lights were low and the faithful conversed in hushed tones. The medium began to chant unintelligibly, and then to emit a strange humming sound (I can’t help seeing her as Margaret Dumont), eventually achieving her trance state. “I am in touch, I am in touch with the Other Side,” she intoned. “Does anyone have a question?”

Groucho arose and asked, “What is the capital of North Dakota?”

He recalled being chased for several blocks, but escaped injury.

Comfort movies.

Do you have a comfort movie? This would be a movie you rewatch in times of stress, when you want to create a comfortable environment for yourself. My son John says he uses the "Back to the Future" movies to mellow out at exam time. He says a lot of people his age -- mid-20s -- have "The Princess Bride" as their comfort movie? So, what's yours?

When I was in college -- in the days before home video -- one campus cinema always showed Marx Brothers movies at exam time. It was understood that this was what you watched to escape the stress. I was trying to think of what I would have now that fits in this category. I was going to say "My Dinner with Andre," "Slacker," "Fast ,Cheap and Out of Control," and "Grey Gardens." But John is disqualifying these choices on the ground that these are actually movies that I consider great, not the sort of junk food that we're trying to talk about here. It's true that I don't have any not-actually-great movies that I like to rewatch for comfort's sake. He says that I use TV reality shows for this. He's right. You know, the other day I watched three episodes of an old season of "Survivor."

(Song that John is playing that is amusing me while I write this post: "Nuages"... by Django Reinhardt. I'm looking for a YouTube clip of that for you, but what I'm seeing is that everyone tries to play that song.)

HEY: This post has a vlog:



And John never found the clip.

OH: I thought of one -- look, we watched it the day I wrecked my car -- "Serial Mom."

Freakishness for fall.

The Style section in today's NYT is full of frightening stories, almost like it's a special spoof edition.

First, we see that the new look for fall is lots of thick, floppy, frumpy, grayish layers. And don't you know it's all a struggle "between clothes that truly attempt to reflect cultural diversity and those that submit to the aesthetic of money"?

Then, we see that eyebrows should be thick and bushy and actively mussed up with clear mascara so they stick up "like plumage" and give the face "a wild expression ... described as 'sauvage.'" But if you don't do it just so, you'll look like Groucho Marx.... a risk you're going to have to take.

Next, we learn that the shoes of the season are "muscle shoes":

The shoes in question are black, bulky and baffling. They have high wedges or cumbersome platforms. Some take the form of demiboots. One pair of leather and suede ankle boots from Balenciaga comes with a harness, a sole thick enough to look like an encyclopedia and a pointy upturned toe, which leaves the top of the shoe looking like a basin....

If the current style has anything to say about sex, it is the suggestion that women suddenly possess little or no enthusiasm for it. Instead the shoes convey the tensions of combative times, said Suzanne Ferris, co-editor of “Footnotes,’’ a scholarly anthology on the meaning of shoes. “This sense of war and fighting and the need to be tougher seems evident,’’ she said.

Blame Bush!

And don't forget your hats.

The unusual stupidity of these styles makes it easier than usual to imagine the articles a year from now that will tell us why no one wants to wear that anymore. Or maybe it will take two years to grow out of this stuff. Since it's Bush's fault, we may need to torture you with this stuff until a Democrat is moved into the White House.

Books about one abstraction, in this case "cunning," and the infinite complexities of Tammy Faye.

An essay about a book on the subject of "cunning." (Via A&L Daily.) The book is by a lawprof, Don Herzog.

As Herzog says, the cunning learn how to mimic the virtuous. And the clever mimic the dull ("Do you suppose you fellows could teach me a bit about this game of poker you're playing?") That creates layers of ambiguous identities, like the mirrored personalities of double agents. Groucho Marx, as Rufus T. Firefly in Duck Soup, offers reassurance: "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." To what extent, Herzog asks, does Tammy Faye Bakker's elaborately contrived make-up define her? Would she still be Tammy if her face were unadorned?

I haven't read the book. But I have seen "Duck Soup"! And I've seen "The Eyes of Tammy Faye." I wonder how deeply Herzog delved into the infinite complexities of Tammy Faye. Don't take that woman lightly. She means something!

Wisconsin political bloggers.

The Wisconsin State Journal has an article on political bloggers in Wisconsin, with some material about me. The paper version has a photo of me, which you can see in this PDF tearsheet, and the caption on the photo refers to this post of mine, blogging about the photographer taking my picture, making this possibly the most self-referential post I've ever written.

So let's check out the other Wisconsin political bloggers cited in the article. I'm replacing the URLs with actual links to the blogs (which the WSJ fails to provide):

Boots and Sabers: Conservative bloggers Owen Robinson and Jed Dorman.

Fighting Bob: Former gubernatorial candidate Ed Garvey and a slate of liberal contributing writers.

Jessica McBride: Former Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter and wife of Waukesha County District Attorney Paul Bucher, a Republican candidate for attorney general.

Paul Soglin: Waxing America: By the former Madison mayor.

Sykes Writes: Conservative Milwaukee blogger and talk show host Charlie Sykes.

The Xoff Files: Liberal blogger Bill Christofferson, the chief campaign strategist for Gov. Jim Doyle's first gubernatorial campaign.

Dennis York: Conservative Madison blogger who writes under a pseudonym.

Waxing America? Is that anything like waxing wroth? (Or waxing Roth, for you Marx Brothers fans.)

Anyway, check them out, especially if you're interested in Wisconsin politics. I only occasionally write about Wisconsin politics. I follow the stories but, unlike these other bloggers, I only write about it occasionally.