60's candy

I've been looking for pictures of candy from the 60's for a project I'm working on. Remember these?

Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim, reprise

Here are some more mangled headlines from "Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim; and other flubs from the nation's press," edited by the Columbia Journalism Review, compiled by Gloria Cooper.        

"Corection"

CIA Reportedly Sought to Destroy Domestic Flies

Crash prompts change in rules; planes must clear mountains first

Beating Witness Provides Names

Old Miners Enjoy Benefits of Black Lung

WAR DIMS HOPES FOR PEACE

Ban on soliciting dead in Trotwood

Fish & Game to Hold Annual Election

Complaints about NBA referees growing ugly

Columnist gets urologist in trouble with his peers

Dr. Tackett gives talk on moon

Stud tires out

Lawmen From Mexico Barbecue Guests

Bishop defrocks gay priest

Teen-age prostitution problem is mounting

Difference between day and night found on tour of Torrington Schools

Cabell Democrats Have Two Heads

Lucky man sees pals die

Mrs. Gandhi stoned at rally in India

Nixon to Stand Pat on Watergate Tapes

Former man dies in California

Religion: Synod of ishops rejects most of it

Do it in a microwave oven, save time

Marital Duties to Replace Borough Affairs for Harold Zipkin


Well, if you haven't laughed yet, you're not likely to. When I read the book the cumulative effect has me laughing out loud. Hope you got a grin out of one or two of these.

Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim

Cindy and I had a conversation this morning that reminded me of one of my favorite books, a book of goofed-up headlines collected by students at the Columbia School of Journalism, "Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim."

Some other favorites from the book:

"Milk Drinkers Turn to Powder"

photo caption "Horse, on far left (not visible in photo) . . ."

I'll add some more when I get home and have access to the book.

In the meantime, here's another quote you might like:

"The remarkable thing about television is that it permits several million people to laugh at the same joke and still feel lonely."   T. S. Eliot

Enjoy your day!

Piano Puzzler

Yeterday I heard Piano Puzzler on MPR for the first time! Great music nerd fun!


Composer Bruce Adolphe selects a tune from folk, popular, or classical music, and uses it as the basis for a short composition "in the style of" a different composer. The one I heard yesterday was Gershwin's "It Ain't Necessarily So" in the style of Stravinsky! Man, did that thing move! Adolphe quoted phrases from some of Stravinsky's work as well as other Gershwin quotes, and wove them together into a wonderful piece. The Puzzle is done as a quiz show, with someone from the radio audience trying to identify the tune and the composer. Yesterday's contestant got both!


One of my favorite Christmas CD's uses the same trick, using carols as the basis for "in the style of" works. The best one is "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" in the style of Tchaikovsky. You hear the celestina and think you are listening to the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, until gradually it dawns on you that something is a little different. It's great musical humor.


Click on the title or the link below it to visit their archives.

More quotations, some silly

I love this. It is very silly:

"The deep, deep peace of the double bed after the hurly-burly of the chaise longue."
     Mrs. Patrick Campbell

And now, something completely different:

" . . . my music teacher offered twittering madrigals and something about how, in Italy, the oranges hang on the tree. He treated me--the humiliation of it--as a soprano.

"These, by contrast, are the six elements of a Sacred Harp alto: rage, darkness, motherhood, earth, malice, and sex. Once you feel it, you can always do it. You know where to go for it, though it will cost you.

"In Sacred Harp we are always singing for our fathers, our mothers, our lost. We altos hug the ground, splay out our legs, and cry from the belly; we are suspect even among our own. 'I can't sing next to one of them,' complains a pretty treble, moving down the square."

     Joan Oliver Goldsmith. How Can I Keep From Singing?

Aren't you glad you're an alto? Or don't you wish you were?

And finally:

The "six most dramatic mistakes" made by people in the course of their lives, from Cicero, a Roman stateman and orator:

• The delusion that individual advancement is made by crushing others.
• The tendency to worry about things that cannot be changed or corrected.
• Insisting that a thing is impossible because we ourselves cannot do it.
• Refusing to set aside our own trivial preferences.
• Neglecting development and refinement of the mind, and not acquiring the habit of reading and studying.
• Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.

Amazingly durable ideas.

That's all for now!

Great quotations

Quotes I've collected:

"On recalling the first time he read The Arabian Nights, Dickends found 'all things become uncommon and enchanted to me! All lamps are wonderful; all rings are talismans!'"
    from Victorian Fairy Tale Book, ed. Michael Patrick Hearn, Introduction

Reminds me of Nikos Kazantzakis, (author of Zorba the Greek) describing his childhood "buzzing bee and honey-filled mind." Our internal life of imagination and wonder.

BTW, my sister tells me that MLA standards no longer include underlining of book titles. Imagine that! But I forgot to ask if we are now to use bold or italic. If I've got it wrong, I'm sure the deity has forgiven.

"Letters are the great fixative of experience. Time erodes feeling. Time creates indifference. Letters prove to us that we once cared. They are the fossils of feeling."
     journalist Janet Malcolm, from
More Than Words: Illustrated Letters from the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art

"no organism can survive very long without externally originating cutaneous stimulation."
     Ashley Montague. Touching: The Human Significance of Skin.

If anyone wonders why you want a hug, you can use this fancy way to say that we all need touch.

And finally,

"If freedom means anything, it is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."
     George Orwell

I have a few more which I will save for another post.