I really don't know why I didn't think of this sooner, combining my interest in culling quotes and in posting blog entries. (If I was really with it, I'd say...
curating quotes, curating being the latest buzz word.)
After nearly two decades of being ignored, I'm resuscitating my Commonplace collection of quotes, spurred by the recent release of Dwight Garner's newly published book, 'Garner's Quotations: A Modern Miscellany.'
I've already posted two entries about this, so this won't be a lengthy introduction, other than to say I welcome the opportunity to now transcribe utterances from my adult children who have successfully navigated higher education (in one case, much higher education), gained married middle age, decent professional employment and motherhood of two. There's nothing like hearing your kids say things you wish you had said. Art Linkletter, an eon ago had a segment of his daytime talk show, 'House Party' that was 'Kids Say the Darndest Things.' There was of course a book.
When they're adult kids, they can say the best things.
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For those who may not be aware of the back story, the founder of Amazon, the billionaire Jeff Bezos, 56, has left his wife and joined the A-List circuit showing up in warm weather locales with unbuttoned shirts showing off absolutely no chest hair, with Lauren Sánchez on his arm, a woman whose Wikipedia entry would seem to have been written by her publicist that reads: "An Emmy-Award winning American news anchor, entertainment reporter, media personality, actress, producer, pilot and entrepreneur." (If anything has been left out, get in touch with Wikipedia.)
This is not a story of leaving the wife for an much younger woman. Lauren is 50, and would hardly qualify as being taken up with because of her Lolita charms. She has other charms, like also being incredibly wealthy, which of course will come in handy if Jeff wants her to pick up half the check.
Women are very opinionated about men and other women when it comes to their behavior when they move outside their first family. And my oldest daughter's opinion is hardly the exception. Simple. Nancy doesn't like Jeff.
"...Jeff Bezos...leaving his wife for an inflatable pool toy"
–Nancy O'Connor
Hey, Jeff and Lauren are both from New Mexico. That's gotta count for something.
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“The first opera and the first litter should both be drowned,” quipped some
19th-century opera-monger whose name escapes me. It is awfully harsh on puppies, and it would be almost as harsh on Elliot Carter, who recently wrote his first opera at 90, a work that received its New York premiere on Sunday with the Chicago Symphony at Carnegie Hall.
--Kyle Gann, lead to a music review, NYT, March 7, 2000
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Tonya Harding pleaded not guilty yesterday to charges that he smacked her live-in boyfriend in the nose with a hubcap and bloodied his face with her fists.
--AP story, NYT, February 25, 2000
Sounds like she put a dent in the service for four.
--Anonymous
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The three men work together in the buzz of the lunchtime rush. The pickups, drop-offs, reaches and turns are the ballet of waiting on tables. They are the unseen girders that support a successful meal.
--Alan Feuer, NYT, June 11, 2001, on the veteran waiters at Peter Luger’s steakhouse in Willamsburg, Brooklyn
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Remember the next time you need to mail a $46 million lottery ticket...we’ve had experience with delivering that sort of thing.
--Ad for the US Postal Service, June 22, 2001
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At times he had no pension or health insurance. The riches evoked by his patrician manner turned out to be illusory, and he and his wife, Mary, lived for years in a one-bedroom apartment.
--Robert D. McFadden, NYT, February 2, 2000; Obituary excerpt for
John V. Lindsay, 79, two-term mayor of New York City, 1966-1973.
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Alec Campbell, the last survivor of 50,000 Australians who fought in the heroic, ill-fated campaign against the Turks at Gallipoli in 1915, helping forge their new nation’s identity, died May 16 at the age of 103.
Mr. Campbell, who will receive a state funeral, is survived by 9 children, 30 grandchildren, 32 great-grandchildren and 2 great-great-grandchildren.
--John Shaw, NYT, May 20, 2002, Obituary excerpt.
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Windsor, Ontario
During Prohibition, Americans rowed across the Detroit River to this border city to buy whisky. A generation later, young people drove across the river to buy marijuana. But today, the border contraband run is to score a different kind of Canadian pot, one that gives a different kind of thrill—the forbidden flush.
“Why do I need the government to tell me what kind of toilet to buy?” Linda Walton, a visiting American, asked one hot Saturday after her husband, Tony, wrestled three 3.5 gallon-capacity toilets into their van.
The Waltons, and their two boys, Kyle and Ian, had made the five-and-a half-hour road trip from Indianapolis in search of suburbia’s new holy grail: the kind of old-style big-flush toilet that Americans took as their birthright until 1994. That year, a federal water conservation law went into effect, mandating that all new toilets use only 1.6 gallons a flush.
--James Brooke, NYT, July 27, 2000
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When CIA headquarters was named for him, former President Bush says his wife asked: “Why would they name a building that has to do with intelligence after a 75-year-old guy who jumps out of a perfectly good airplane?”
--Minor Memos, WSJ, Edited by Ronald G. Shafer
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Comedian Argus Hamilton says [Al] Gore irritated women viewers with his heavy breathing and sighing into the microphone: “It only reminded them of why they had to get Caller ID in the first place.”
--Minor Memos, WSJ, Edited by Ronald G. Shafer, after the first Bush/Gore presidential debate.
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But pretty bulls are nothing more than well-dressed meat to Mr. Nelson, a wealthy Beaumont, Texas businessman. As operator of something called the “Bad Boys Ultimate Challenge Bull Riding Tour,” the brawny 6-foot-6 promoter gets excited only by one that can buck like a blender full of ball bearings.
--WSJ “A-Head” piece.
http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com
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