Morning 

¶ Oregano: Having seen Melvin Frank’s A Touch of Class when it came out, in 1973, and liked it very much, I remembered two things about the film very clearly: the assignation that Steve Blackburn (George Segal) and Vicki Allessio (Glenda Jackson) achieve during a performance of Beethoven’s Seventh, a symphony that ever since has trailed a rather unwonted allure. The other was “oreGAHno.”

Noon

¶ Apron: There’s a movie, don’t you think, in Dan Barry’s story about the West Virginia Mason who was expelled because he advocated reforms that would put an end to archaic discriminatory practices.

¶ Gidget: George Snyder — whom I hope to spend Thursday with, in Los Angeles — sent me a link to Peter Lunenfeld’s delightfully polymathic look at Gidget, in The Believer. Who knew she was Jewish?

Night

¶ Tornado: If you haven’t seen the most amazing close-up of a tornado ever, be sure to check out Lori Mehmen‘s ticket to the photographers’ hall of fame. (via JMG)
Oremus…

Morning, cont’d

§ Oregano. Watching the video last night, I was reminded that what really happens during Beethoven’s Seventh isn’t supposed to be an assignation: Steve slips away from his wife at the beginning in the Albert Hall and dashes over to his love-nest in Soho not for a quickie but for a breakie: he intends to tell Vicki that their affair has got to stop. But he can’t, so then they have the quickie, and he steals back into his seat just as whirling finale is coming to an end. “You’ve been gone a long time,” his wife observes, peeved, if at all, by his having missed a great performance.

Even by this point in the film, nobody has mentioned any herbs or spices by name. When I saw Vicki walk into a deli, however, I knew that she was going to ask for oreGAHno, because it’s the special ingredient in a dish that she will cook for Steve. But wait — she asks for oREYgano, just as I would do. Nobody, in fact, mispronounces “oregano” in A Touch of Class.

I had to ask myself why I remembered that they did.

Oh.

It would appear that I learned how to pronounce “oregano” correctly from hearing Glenda Jackson and George Segal say the word. Until then, I had said “oreGAHno.” I thanked the movie for the lesson by imputing my error to the source of its correction, something that Anna Freud, I believe, calls “Identification with the Aggressor.”

Noon, cont’d

§ Apron. Think about it: when was the last time you saw a movie about Free Masonry? The Da Vinci Code meets Babbitt.

§ Gidget. On Wednesday afternoon, Kathleen and I will fly from JFK to LAX, and then take a taxi to Santa Monica, where Kathleen will be speaking at a conference on Thursday. In the past, I wouldn’t have accompanied her on so short a trip, but now that I have The Daily Blague to think about, I’m always looking for fresh air. Plus, thanks to the miracle of the Internet, I have gotten to know (and actually met) the super Mr Snyder. We’re planning to check out the Huntington.

Night, cont’d

§ Tornado. Meanwhile, here in bustling Manhattan, things are very quiet. This afternoon, I’ve been following the advice of my favorite self-help book, How to Make Your Life Incredibly Boring. Let’s see.  

First, I “processed” about twenty-five DVDs. What does that mean, you ask? It’s too boring to go into: (I just tried.) There is room on the CD shelving in the back hallway for about two hundred DVDs. As a rule, these are the most-watched videos, although the work of Alfred Hitchcock, Woody Allen, and James Ivory is kept in one of six albums of DVDs. Most of the well over six hundred DVDs in my library are stored in the other five albums. “Processing” a DVD means creating a database record of the location of each of them, stuffing the sleeve material in a drawer, and throwing away the jewel box.

Then I went through all the relatively unimportant mail. I even opened a few envelopes.

Then I searched WhitePages.com for an old school friend who seems to have dropped from view — a letter that I sent to him last week (“send smoke signals if you get this”) came back in today’s mail. The search eventually led me to register with an alumni association. Now look what I’ve done. I blame LXIV, who showed me WhitePages on Friday afternoon.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 16th, 2008 at 12:30 pm and is filed under Blogosphere, Culinarion, Lively Arts, The Hours, Yorkville High Street. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.