Posts Tagged ‘Harpo Marx’
“It’s the 8th Wonder of the World”*…
Linotype typecasting machines revolutionized publishing when they were invented in 1886, and remained the industry standard for nearly a century after. The first commercially successful mechanical typesetter, the Linotype significantly sped up the printing process, allowing for larger and more local daily newspapers. In Farewell, etaoin shrdlu (the latter portion of the title taken from the nonsense words created by running your fingers down the letters of the machine’s first two rows), the former New York Times proofreader David Loeb Weiss bids a loving farewell to the Linotype by chronicling its final day of use at the Times on 1 July 1978. An evenhanded treatment of the unremitting march of technological progress, Weiss’s film about an outmoded craft is stylistically vintage yet also immediate in its investigation of modernity…
Via Aeon: “The last day of hot metal press before computers come in at The New York Times.”
* Thomas Edison, speaking of the linotype machine
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As we agree with John O’Hara that “hot lead can be almost as effective coming from a linotype as from a firearm,” we might spare a thought for a communicator of a very different sort, Arthur Duer “Harpo” Marx; he died on this date in 1964. A comedian, actor, mime, and musician, he was the second-oldest of the Marx Brothers. Harpo was a master of both the clown and pantomime traditions; he wore a curly reddish blonde wig, never spoke during performances, and of course, played the harp in each of the Marx Brothers’ films. A man of wide and varied friendships, he was a member of the Algonquin Roundtable.
“They still believe in God, the family, angels, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other obsolete stuff”*…
Exclamation Comma
“Just because you’re excited about something doesn’t mean you have to end the sentence”
The Interrobang, the Asterism, and a dozen other curious connectors at BuzzFeed’s “14 Punctuation Marks That You Never Knew Existed.”
* Isaac Bashevis Singer
As we resist coming to a full stop, we might send silent birthday wishes to Adolph (later Arthur) “Harpo” Marx; he was born on this date in 1888. Harpo’s signature style, he recalls in his autobiography, was born after reading a review of one of the earliest performances he did with his brothers; it read, in part: “Adolph Marx performed beautiful pantomime which was ruined whenever he spoke.” Thereafter, of course, it was all whistles and horns…
And mallets: Harpo was inducted into the Croquet Hall of Fame in 1979.
Ah, so THAT explains it…
From the ever-illuminating Overthinking It and contributor Mark Lee:
The Hubbert Peak Theory of Rock, or, Why We’re All Out of Good Songs
Many rock purists and music snobs (myself included) often lament the quality of most modern pop/rock music. “Music these days is so trite and derivative,” they say. “It’s just been downhill since the 60’s and 70’s. Those were the days.”
A few years ago, Rolling Stone magazine added fuel to the music snobbery fire with its “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” list. Anyone casually paging through the list would notice that the bulk of the list was comprised of songs from the 60’s and 70’s, just like the music snobs always say.
I, however, wasn’t content with the casual analysis. So I punched the list into Excel, crunched some numbers, and found an interesting parallel between the decline of rock music quality and, of all things, the decline in US oil discovery and production:
Read the analysis here.
As we oil up our turntables and dust off the vinyls, we might smile a silent smile in honor of that most marvelous of the Marx Brothers, Harpo: Adolph (later known as Arthur, then as Harpo) Marx was born on this date in 1888 in New York City.
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