Archive: Arts & Entertainment

Smart Talk SMART TALK
By Garrel S. Utter, N.P.

YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE:  This 1937 Sylvia Sydney-Henry Fonda movie is better than You Only Live Twice, the 1967 Sean-Connery-as-James-Bond film, but both titles are bombs.

As in the beer commercial of yesteryear, also written by the linguistically impaired, “You only go around once,” only is misplaced, which changes the meaning.

Most modifiers in English describe the word immediately following, as in red shoes, or boldly go.  Only living, or only going, are not the intended meaning in either case.

Moving only to its proper place makes each sentence sparkle, because its meaning is clear: You live only once.  You live only twice.  You go around only once.

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Smart Talk SMART TALK
By Dr. Molto Breve

HOUND DOG: The Institute for the Linguistically Impaired often holds weekend clinics at Warriner House.  A recent patient pointed this out this redundancy to us and thereby earned a gift certificate for her next visit.

Degrees of redundancy seem as silly as degrees of pregnancy, but it's tempting to say that hound dog is even more redundant than tuna fish.  Tuna alone tells us we're considering a kind of fish, which is why the canners find it unnecessary to use the word fish on their labels.

But hound can serve as a generic term for dog.  Tuna's not generic.  Hound actually comes from the generic German word for dog. 

We often use redundancies for endearment, such as puppy dog and kitty cat, or even hound dog, but when we say hound, nobody thinks we're talking about a fish.

In language as in other fields of endeavor, simpler is better.  Using redundancies is like armor plating rocks.

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Smart Talk SMART TALK
By Dr. Alfred Chatterly

REAL SIMPLE: Here at the Institute for the Linguistically Impaired, we’ve noticed a steep decline in the use of really during the past few years. When Real Simple, the magazine, appeared, we knew Americans were looking ignorant to the rest of the English-speaking world in yet another way.

To treat this disorder, the Institute staff has had to search for its cause. Using the –ly suffix certainly doesn’t put people off. Note all the incorrect use of I feel badly. That the same people, including many in positions of power and influence, will blithely use real simple, real good, and real hard indicates something deeper.

We formed the beginning of a theory when we saw this linguistic impairment showing up most consistently in two of our native sons, Dr. Phil McGraw and George W. Bush. Two powerful Texans can do a lot of damage.

According to our theory, saying really simple, really good, and really hard might be perceived as an indicator of education and superiority. Wal, pardner, nobody wants to sound as if they’re better. Oops: Nobody wants to sound like they’re better. Does they. So let’s keep it real simple, in the American frontier tradition. All hail Joe Sixpack.

Never mind that many of our spokesmen help the rest of us look like a bunch of ignorant cowboys.

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ITHACA NY: The vitality of the theater depends on a community of working theatre artists: writers, actors and designers. The Kitchen Theatre Company's KITCHEN SINK series (underwritten by First Niagara) provides a venue for emerging regional theatre artists to develop work through staged readings and informal performances of works-in-progress. This season, the Kitchen Sink features three cornerstone events: 3rd Annual 48-Hour Playwriting Marathon, Teen Extreme Playwriting Contest & Marathon, and New Play Festival. For this year's New Play Festival, the Kitchen Theatre Company presents a workshop production of a new play by local playwright Aoise Stratford to be presented over three nights, May 17-19.

The Unfortunates is a one-woman play whose central character, Mary Jane Kelly, has a problem. She's a pound forty behind in her rent, her window is broken, she has lost her key, and her boyfriend just moved out. And it's 1888—not a good time to be poor and "unfortunate" on the streets of London. Somewhere out there in the foggy shadows, one of the world's most notorious criminals is at work. Mary only has two ways to secure her own front door. One of them is prostitution. The other is selling something she shouldn't have in the first place, something that she'll have to betray her best friend and herself to give up. This new show by award-winning playwright Aoise Stratford explores such big issues as popular culture and women in Victorian society and more human concerns, such as the ways we choose to remember the ones we've lost and how that defines the way we live.

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