What does the crowd say? Watermelon, cantaloupe, watermelon, cantaloupe...?

Or is it walla walla walla?

I saw a movie once, probably twenty years ago, in which one character is a Hollywood old-timer who's known in the biz as the World's Greatest Extra. Another character says, awestruck, "He invented the 'Courtroom Walla'!" It's explained that in courtroom dramas, when the verdict is announced, everyone in the courtroom softly says, "walla walla walla," creating a nice, low-level hum of excitement without anything really discernible in it.

Or are they just saying murmur....



Is the word "murmur" onomonopia? OED says:

Etymology: Partly < Middle French, French murmure indistinct expression of feeling by a number of people (c1170 in Old French), subdued expression of discontent (c1200), muted noise (c1230), sound of a light breeze (1555), respiratory murmur (1819 in passage translated in quot. 1821 at sense 5) < murmurer murmur v.; and partly < its ultimate etymon classical Latin murmur a low, continuous sound, a subdued or indistinct utterance, such an utterance indicative of anger or resentment, a reduplicated imitative formation....

The answer seems to be partly.

"Now that my war on Christmas is over, I can begin my war on New Years."

Steve Martin tweets.

"'I couldn’t be a woman,' Steve Martin once joked, 'because I’d play with my breasts all day.'"

"Now he has written a novel about a young woman, but nearly the only thing he can imagine about her is wanting to play with her breasts. The Object of Beauty is a nasty exercise in narcissism, particularly in the narcissism of the famous."

A nasty review that considers a book nasty because it seems only to say look at my breasts begins with 2 sentences that say look at my breasts.

Steve Martin is in trouble.

For luring people to pay $50 to hear him interviewed and then having the interview be all about the art world and his book about the art world.

It is exactly — exactly — like demanding your money back because Elton John didn't play "Rocket Man." 

No, it's like going to see Elton John and demanding your money back because he played only classical music — and not at the level of a professional classical pianist.

"Tonight, you belong to me."

I got this song stuck in my head the other day after I ran across a clip of the old Patience and Prudence recording via Digital Oddio. Digging up the whole thing in YouTube, I saw this charming Fiona Apple version. The song was written back in 1926, I learned on Wikipedia. There, I was reminded of a scene from "The Jerk" that I had forgotten, in which Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters sing the song together and then try, very hard, to kiss — and fail.

"Elvis the ecstatic/ Elvis the plastic/ Elvis the elastic with a spastic dance that could explain the energy of America.”

Bono's poem about Elvis, aired on British radio:

A warning about the poem’s language preceded the airing, as a series of offensive words including “nigger” and “spastic” were employed.

Here in America — where we have Elvis energy, apparently — those 2 words are on completely different levels of offensiveness, but I guess that's the way they talk in Britain, where, presumably, "spastic" is not a word to be used casually.

***

Bonus: "Saturday Night Live" transcript. ("Oh no, its Chaz 'The Spaz' Knerlman!... Why don't you shut up, Spazalopolis!")

Ah, now it's coming back to me. Remember back in 2006, when Tiger Woods got into trouble for casually saying "spaz" in Britain? Language Log had a great post titled "A Brief History of Spaz":

[T]he clumsy or inept meaning of spaz remained mostly on the playground until the late 1970s, when it began seeping into American popular culture. In 1978, Saturday Night Live started running occasional sketches starring "The Nerds," with Bill Murray as Todd DiLamuca and Gilda Radner as Lisa Loopner. On two shows that year (Apr. 22 and Nov. 4), host Steve Martin joined in, playing the character Charles Knerlman, or "Chaz the Spaz" as he was known to Todd and Lisa.... A year after the SNL sketches in 1979, Bill Murray starred in the summer-camp comedy Meatballs, which featured a stereotypically nerdy character played by Jack Blum called "Spaz."

For someone like Tiger Woods who came of age in the '80s (and who, incidentally, is on record as saying that another Bill Murray movie, Caddyshack, is his all-time favorite), the American usage of spaz had long lost any resonance it might have had with the epithet spastic. This is not the case in Great Britain, however, where both spastic and spaz evidently remain in active usage as derogatory terms for people with cerebral palsy or other disabilities affecting motor coordination. A BBC survey ranked spastic as the second-most offensive term for disabled people, just below retard....

***

Don't you love the energy of America?

"Excuse me! I was in First Class! Where's the VIP rescue boat?!"

"So I guess that whole 'I forgot' thing works after all! Thank you, Steve Martin!"

LOL.

""You... can be a millionaire... and never pay taxes! You can be a millionaire... and never pay taxes!"

"You say... 'Steve.. how can I be a millionaire... and never pay taxes?' First... get a million dollars. Now... you say, 'Steve... what do I say to the tax man when he comes to my door and says, "You... have never paid taxes"?' Two simple words. Two simple words in the English language: 'I forgot!' How many times do we let ourselves get into terrible situations because we don't say 'I forgot'? Let's say you're on trial for armed robbery. You say to the judge, 'I forgot armed robbery was illegal.' Let's suppose he says back to you, 'You have committed a foul crime. You have stolen hundreds and thousands of dollars from people at random, and you say, "I forgot"?' Two simple words: 'Excuuuuuse me!!'"

Just an old Steve Martin routine that I'll never forget and that sprang to mind once again just now... when I read this story about how Charles Rangel is getting off the hook for his tax problems.

ADDED: Glenn Reynolds says:

[I]f I were the GOP I'd put together an ad featuring Biden's credit-card connections, Dodd's sweetheart mortgage scandal, and Rangel's ongoing problems and run it all over. I can't believe they won't do something like that, since it's a gimme, and I'm surprised that the Dems couldn't get him out of the picture.

"For God's sake, please don't name an award after me."

That's what Steve Martin, accepting the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, read from a slip of paper that he said contained his favorite quote from Mark Twain.