You know how I enjoy combing through the Arts Section of the New York Times for phrases that tickle me for various intertwined and complicated reasons that I can never quite explain. Today, in the "Arts, Briefly" column (not to be confused with our "Arts, Briefly" column) I saw the phrase "eye-gougingly violent," which I didn't quite expect. In a review of a recital, I came across "Ms. von Stade introduced her songs with self-effacing biographical stories. Her mother told her that as a baby she had a rosebud mouth." And I was like, maybe I need to look up the definition of "self-effacing." Then somebody reviewed a Soupy Sales show (!). In addition to dying recently, Mr. Sales is called "lazy and unprepared." The reviewer nails whatever misgivings I might have about PBS when he quotes (in a properly mocking tone) a talking head on the show who says, "Mark Twain goes out of style, but Soupy won’t." Well, the Soupy stuff got me to thinking about the fact that they haven't mentioned Jerry Lewis in a long while, something they used to do all the time. But THAT got me to thinking about the glass house I live in and how I'm always trying to remove the mote in my brother's eye while ignoring the beam in my own, because it turns out the "blog" hasn't mentioned Jerry AT ALL in April, until now, in its waning days. A record low and unforgivable!
