(Published some time after the scheduled date.)<\/p>\r\n
A vaguely connected miscellany. First, some new entries in the title chain game<\/a>:<\/p>\r\n Now a chain of phrases:<\/p>\r\n Players alternate; no repeating allowed. (I believe that series is due to Bhadrika.) You can also leave out the repeated bits: each player just adds a new word, where each adjacent pair of words has to form a recognized phrase (or sometimes a compound word):<\/p>\r\n common cold cut back street wise crack pot sticker shock treatment<\/p>\r\n (For those from regions where the term isn't used, in these parts a \"pot sticker\" is an item of Chinese food, so called because they stick to the pot when cooked. They have a variety of other names in other areas of the US. I have no idea what they'd be called in any part of China.)<\/p>\r\n Along similar lines, there was a theatre warmup<\/a> I heard in high school that involved saying a series of phrases, in a variety of ways. I'm not sure what the significance of the phrases was, but it was always the same phrases in the same order: too hot, hot potato, potato pancake, pancake platter, platter clatter.<\/p>\r\n If you're really bored, you can leave out the requirement for a common phrase as such, and just free-associate a related word, with the further rule that for each new word you have to change the sense in which the last word was used (or pun on it):<\/p>\r\n phone booth Lincoln Cougar cheetah poker gridiron goal check rain sun father priest Judas goat calf leg toe truck tire rest all none habit speed fast eat....<\/p>\r\n Moving right along, here are some new marquee juxtapositions<\/a>:<\/p>\r\n One from rec.humor.funny:<\/p>\r\n One from a theatre in Santa Cruz\u0097or at least the second and third were; the first may've been added in retelling:<\/p>\r\n From the Park Theatre in Menlo Park, 2\/17\/00:<\/p>\r\n From somewhere in Boston, 9\/29\/00:<\/p>\r\n From somewhere in the Bay Area:<\/p>\r\n If you get tired of real-life marquees, you can make up double features:<\/p>\r\n Juxtapositions are not limited to movies. I once saw these two books sitting next to each other on a shelf at a kids' bookstore:<\/p>\r\n Tom Parker, by way of Lesley Tsina, suggests some movies for people double majoring in Marine Biology and Film:<\/p>\r\n My suggestions along the same lines:<\/p>\r\n And that's not even considering the films that already have fish titles, from Jaws<\/cite> to Day of the Dolphin<\/cite> to Go Fish<\/cite> to Octopussy....<\/cite><\/p>\r\n I hear that Mary Ann Madden has retired, after umpteen years running weekly New York Magazine<\/cite> competitions. I never did write to ask for permission to reprint some of the lovely competition results published in hard-to-find books like Maybe He's Dead<\/cite> and Thank You for the Giant Sea Tortoise.<\/cite> But here's what I would've entered in one of her contests had I been around for it. Her version was to come up with a common phrase or title or person's name and either change or remove one letter for comic effect. My version's a little stricter: remove a single letter from a book or movie or poem title.<\/p>\r\n Then there's The Tragedy of Hamet, Prince of Denmark<\/cite>\u2014\u0097clearly that's a typo for either Mamet<\/i> or Hammett,<\/i> but I'm not sure which. It's probably a hard-boiled detective novel about a guy who drinks too much and says \"fuck\" a lot while trying to determine whether his uncle killed his father....<\/p>\r\n
\u0097Jim<\/li>\r\n
\u0097Bruce Chadwick<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>
\r\n Over many a drugged delirious dancer passed out on the floor...\"<\/dd>\r\n
<\/dd>\r\n<\/dl>