CRAIG CONLEY (Prof. Oddfellow) is recognized by Encarta as “America’s most creative and diligent scholar of letters, words and punctuation.” He has been called a “language fanatic” by Page Six gossip columnist Cindy Adams, a “cult hero” by Publisher’s Weekly, a “monk for the modern age” by George Parker, and “a true Renaissance man of the modern era, diving headfirst into comprehensive, open-minded study of realms obscured or merely obscure” by Clint Marsh. An eccentric scholar, Conley’s ideas are often decades ahead of their time. He invented the concept of the “virtual pet” in 1980, fifteen years before the debut of the popular “Tamagotchi” in Japan. His virtual pet, actually a rare flower, still thrives and has reached an incomprehensible size. Conley’s website is OneLetterWords.com.
The author would like to thank [...] Nigel LeFeuvre, piano tuner of Leominster, for working out how to put a ghost into a piano."
***
The general rule seemed to be the smaller the village the longer the name. There were Stockingtop and Perrywick, Knockley-under-Hill and Lurton-by-Lugg, Bailey cum Verret and Little Besthope. ***
*** "I'm always engaged to Jimmy on Tuesdays...and James on Mondays."
*** He looked very earnest and determined and grasped the menu as though it were his notes.
*** It was a little disconcerting, therefore, when at the end of a particularly brilliant passage he stopped suddenly and said: "Ann, you have such lovely eyebrows."
*** The telephone bell cut through her smooth sentence like a rude critic. ***
*** Might not the fact that there are different laughters in one's experience be accounted for by some process of development in one's laughing history?
*** The head of the spectator in front of me grows to the size of a Hallowe'en pumpkin the moment anything interesting occurs in the center of the stage.
*** "Who Cares," which is so nonchalant as to do away with a question mark, is a brisk and entertaining revue. [Baird Leonard]
*** Mr. Brook continues to possess the screen's most expressive pair of eyebrows. [Harry Evans]
*** [The play] starts off with an improbable situation, which is much worse than an impossible one.
*** "Derelict" differs from the general run of "Sez you" and "Oh yeah" movies. [Evans] ***
*** The three of them together produce but one wondrous work during the evening: Mr. Kruger can pronounce the word lawyer all in one syllable. [Ralph Barton]
*** An ill-fitting tunic or a misplaced helmet will provoke laughs which were never nominated in the author's bond. [Baird Leonard]
*** The picture is titled "In Gay Madrid" because so little of the action takes place there. [Harry Evans] ***
Two notes re. the attachments: 1. The silly illustrations signed "RB" are presumably by Ralph Barton, who also wrote some of the theater columns but was actually more notable as a cartoonist. 2. In case you don't (as I didn't) recognize "spring-slap" as the name of an automotive woe, it apparently referred to jolts caused by inadequate shock absorbers or whatever.
From "Secrets in the Snow," by J. Jefferson Farjeon:
*** In a moment or two the door moved, and a head peered in cautiously. It was not a prepossessing head.... It came round the door like a bad joke. ***
From "Erotica Made Me The Writer I Am Today," by Charlie Jane Anders:
I even found a story that I had submitted a year or so earlier, which I now realized was completely wrong for Black Sheets magazine — I had the dubious pleasure of writing myself a rejection letter.