Archive: Arts & Entertainment

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SMART TALK SMART TALK
By  Nurse “Gabby” Johnson

PAST EXPERIENCE: Underbelly, Texas, home of the Institute for the Linguistically Impaired, has a constable who is a temporal retentive. We know this because Clayton Johnson’s theories on the latest shooting are always based on past experience. He relies on good citizens’ past memories of the past history of Lengua Loco County.

Sometimes, he gropes through past records for information. If past precedent is any indication, Clayt won’t show up at the Institute for treatment. The time when he was willing to listen has passed past.

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SMART TALK SMART TALK
By  Sotto Voce, R.N.

PERSONAL FEELINGS: For a little sadistic fun, therapists at the Institute for the Linguistically Impaired redundantly say personally, I feel… just to irritate each other.

However, some poor souls have no charm; it’s personal charm. No opinions, only personal opinions. No friends, only personal friends, whom they introduce as a personal friend of mine. And their feelings are always personal feelings.

This is both redundant and cheap. They sound like the cliché of show business people that Billy Crystal used to imitate: “I love this guy; I have deep personal feelings for him, he looks mahvelous, and he’s a dear personal friend of mine.”

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Everyone dreams of going to California and getting into TV or movies. Some people actually do. Tim DeKay grew up in Lansing, and is now pursuing a successful career in acting. He's been seen on many popular television shows over the past ten years. Recently he's been seen on CSI and Without a Trace, and you'll be able to see him on two episodes of My Name is Earl on January 26 and March 2 (Thursdays at 9pm on TW Cable channel 3).

DeKay says, "I had a great childhood in Lansing." He fondly recalls growing up in a small town where he and his brother could "head out the back door and play for hours with many friends throughout the neighborhood." A highlight was playing Fagin in the Lansing High School production of Oliver. "It was a thrill to be Fagin in Oliver, and be on stage with my girlfriend, buddies and my brother, James, and also have several friends in the orchestra."

SMART TALK SMART TALK
By  Dr. Shirley Glibb



PASSIVE VOICE: Some weekends at the Institute for the Linguistically Impaired, the staff meets at the Fowler Lounge to relax and vent. After we loosen up with a few schooners of sarsaparilla, we enjoy inventing special hells for those who love passive verbs.

You know, as in it was decided at the meeting that a new bus will be procured. Meeting minutes are full of tripe like this. I will be made sick if I go on.

Nurse Clara Dix calls the use of passive verbs wusstalk. The speaker or writer of passive verbs is afraid to take responsibility for a simple fact.

I think these wimps should go to a hell where they must always use passive verbs and say things to each other such as, “You are loved by me.”

Isn’t that romantic?

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ITHACA, NY: The Kitchen Theatre Company continues its 2005/06 - 15th Anniversary MAIN STAGE Season with Tony & the Soprano, a brand new musical comedy with book and lyrics by Rachel Lampert, original music by Larry Pressgrove and arrangements of classical opera by Richard Montgomery. This original musical play was commissioned and workshopped by the Kitchen Theatre with a cast of seven. It begins previews on Thursday, January 12 at 7:30pm, opens Saturday, January 14, and runs through Saturday, February 11, 2006.

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SMART TALK SMART TALK
By Garrell S. Utter, N.P.

PERIOD OF TIME: At the Institute for the Linguistically Impaired, we consider using period of time or time period an early symptom of the dreaded William F. Buckley Syndrome. The patient’s speech is not just redundant, it’s just too wordy, as if the patient must have just one more second of your attention, so you can admire his or her vocabulary.

Early in the last century, the great W.C. Fields pioneered the syndrome for comic effect, saying, for instance altercation in the thoroughfare instead of street fight.

If we catch Buckley Syndrome in this early stage, however, we can cure it with intensive therapy. The patient can learn to say time or period. They can also learn to say in two weeks. In two weeks’ time isn’t only redundant (and fatuous), it’s also as pretentious as I feel badly.

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SMART TALK SMART TALK
By Dr. Shirley Glibb

The Institute for the Linguistically Impaired is, of course, in Texas. At our facility in Underbelly, the seat of Lengua Loco County, we spend most of our time treating patients for Redundancy Disorder. To borrow a coinage of a native son who deserves to remain nameless, we don’t misunderestimate the magnitude of our task.

But imagine my dismay at seeing redundancies printed large in ads and on labels, such as free gift. Clearly, some potential patients escape us.

I was shocked again today, walking into a book store’s coffee shop. There, displayed on a rack, sat boxes labeled Chai Tea. Don’t the drink’s producers know that chai means tea? It’s a tea preparation from Central Asia, heavily flavored with spices and diluted with milk. Yak milk, if it’s authentic.

Saying chai tea is like saying soda pop, or like the advice to drink liquids.

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