We've got a li'l problem
I've noticed that li'l is often spelled wrong, so I want to make it clear that the way that I've just spelled it is indeed the correct spelling, not that I recommend its frequent use.

Aside from its use in the possessive case ("Karen's son is getting so big!" "The Kravitzes are the Stephenses' nervous neighbors.") or to denote certain plurals ("Remember to dot your i's and cross your t's." "I bought my first CD's in the 1980's."), an apostrophe is also used to mark the omission of a letter or letters from a word. This is sometimes done to make contractions where two words are combined (don't=do+not, I'm=I+am), but can also be done to shorten a single word, as in the case of turning little into li'l, in which the apostrophe replaces two t's.   [Note: The apostrophe isn't absolutely necessary or required in my above examples of "CD's" and "1980's."  Those could be written as "CDs" and "1980s" and would still be considered acceptable by many grammarians, or in many cases those might actually be the preferred spellings.]

So, the skank-a-licious Lil' Kim gets it wrong. Even though her apostrophe could arguably be said to be replacing the missing e at the end of little, it's actually supposed to be replacing the two t's, as I said above (the silent e is just not accounted for in this instance). Back when the "artist" formerly known as Li'l Bow Wow, Kim's contemporary, was still known by that name, he actually got the name right... sometimes.  He was occasionally credited as Lil' Bow Wow. It's tricky keeping up with the name changes of some of these "celebrities" when they seem to be changing their aliases more than con artists and grifters who are wanted by the police in a number of states.

I guess, technically, if it's your own name you can pretty much call yourself anything that you damned well please. You can be Li'l, L'il, Lil', or even 'Lil. I suppose I've seen more egregious name choices than these in the past decade or two, but that will be a topic for another day...

P.S. For the record, even that inbred, backwoods, redneck hillbilly Li'l Abner gets it right, so there's no excuse for anyone else to get it wrong.

Side effects may include...
I've noticed that most of the many, many, many TV ads for prescription sleep medications mention "drowsiness" as one of the side effects that they warn against at the end of the commercials.  Shouldn't drowsiness be the one desired effect of a sleep aid?  Usually side effects only happen to a small percentage of users, so if drowsiness is only a side effect of sleep aids, then what happens to the majority of people who take them?

My favorite videos online

1. Orson Welles doing a Paul Masson commercial... drunk
Laughter through the tears.  "Aaaaaah, the French... champagne."

2. Bette Davis singing "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane" on the "Andy Williams Show"
Tears through the laughter.  "She could dance. She could sing. She could... do almost anything."

3. Bing Crosby, Engelbert Humperdinck, Bobbie Gentry, Gwen Verdon, and Dick Shawn singing a Beatles medley on "Hollywood Palace", circa 1969
WTF!?

Indecent Prepositions

I haven't posted in a while, but the schoolmarm is back.

I'm not a preposition Nazi, really, but these are some common mistakes people make. You are enamored of something, not enamored with it. One thing differs from another, it is not different than. Use than when you're comparing specific attributes: taller than, redder than, older than, etc. (e.g., "The play was different from any other that I've ever seen.")

You try to do something, you don't try and do it (e.g., Try to be here early on Monday.). If you were to try and do something, then you'd really just do it. There's no point in mentioning the trying part. "Try" should be followed by an infinitive ("to" followed by a verb; e.g., to be). The whole point of using the word "try" in a sentence is to convey the fact that the attempt's ultimate outcome is uncertain, but using "and" instead of "to" implies that you're telling a person to do two things (in the previously cited example, the two things are 1. to try, 2. and to be here early on Monday). If you're giving a direct command to someone, then you don't want them just to try, you want them to accomplish whatever the task is (Be here early on Monday.).

Most people say a myriad of, but this is one word that shouldn't have any preposition associated with it at all. And don't use "a" before it, either. Use "myriad" the same way you'd use "many". You wouldn't say, "I saw a many of annoying TV commercials during the program last night." You'd just say, "I saw many annoying TV commercials..." That's how you should use myriad. "There were myriad groupies hanging outside the stage door after the performance."

Yes, yes, you might be getting ready to tell me that many sources accept the usage of myriad as a noun, as the ever-vigilant Davis McDavis has done. I know this, but I refuse to acquiesce. I'll never do it. Never! Myriad-as-noun, I reject thee!

I know that Patricia T. O'Conner, author of Woe Is I, would agree with me that just because something is considered to be acceptable usage in the dictionary it doesn't mean that it's grammatically preferable. Here's what she has to say about myriad:

"It originally meant 'ten thousand,' but myriad now means 'numerous' or 'a great number of.' (Lulu has myriad freckles.) Avoid 'myriads' or 'a myriad of.'"

Who am I to argue with the ever-amusing Ms. O'Conner?  Or would that be whom?

The word-o doesn't mean-o what you think-o
I've noticed that when people use the Spanish expression "mano a mano" they usually use it in the right context, but clearly think that the literal translation means "man to man". I've seen in movies and TV shows (especially reality shows) that when a guy says it he often points to himself and the person he's speaking to. It doesn't translate to "man to man", though. "Mano a mano" literally translates to "hand to hand", as in "hand to hand combat".

Sometimes people will even say "mano y mano", which translates as "hand and hand", and makes no sense.

I think that this all derives from the fact that so many people believe that you can just add an "o" to the end of most English words and you're instantly speaking Spanish, Italian, and/or Portuguese. Having studied all three languages I can tell you that, although this is occasionally true with some Latin-based words, these lovely foreign tongues are a bit more complicated than that.

Da Vinci Code plagiarism?
"The Da Vinci Code" author Dan Brown was accused in Britain's High Court on Monday of taking material for his blockbuster conspiracy thriller from a 1982 book about the Holy Grail (just as much of this material that I'm writing for my blog has been "taken" from yahoo! News).

The accusation was made in a breach of copyright lawsuit filed against "The Da Vinci Code" publisher Random House by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, authors of "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail". Baigent and Leigh claim Brown appropriated their ideas and themes in writing his book, which has sold more than 25 million copies worldwide since its 2003 publication. But in their book, Baigent and Leigh pretty much claim to be reporting facts that they'd uncovered through their research. They didn't consider their book to be fiction, so it's not an artistic creation, but an academic study. I think that as a supposed report of established "facts", which have reportedly been known to a select group of people for the past 2000 years, these authors can't possibly claim ownership of such details. People don't "own" facts, especially not if there have supposedly been a number of people who have known these facts, whether they were secret or not, throughout the past two millennia. It's very possible (or probable) that anyone else who would have had access to their "evidence" would have been able to draw the same theories or conclusions that they did in their book.

Let's say a few years ago there was an academic who was the first to uncover details about Thomas Jefferson's relationship with his slave, Sally Hemings, and was to write an paper (article, treatise, book, etc.) on the subject. If a novelist were to come along afterwards and write a fictional tale based upon those details, would the academic be able to claim ownership of those facts? Of course not.

It would be different if Baigent and Leigh had written a straight piece of fiction, but they claimed to have uncovered facts, and facts belong to everyone. They are in the public domain and therefore I think that Brown's use of those facts was what they call in the Intellectual Property Law field, "fair use".

Brown even mentions their book within his tale, so these guys can only have benefited from the attention that "The Da Vinci Code" has brought to them. I bought and read their book a couple years ago because of the curiosity that reading Brown's book had instilled in me. I'm sure they've sold many more of their books because of his, so they should just be grateful, instead of biting the hand that has been feeding them (and will continue to feed them as long as "The Da Vinci Code" keeps being sold).

One last thing on this subject, also from yahoo! News (see, I'm giving credit where it's due), Brown's book also was the target of a previous U.S. lawsuit. In 2005, a U.S. judge in New York ruled that his book did not infringe on the copyrights of "Daughter of God," by Lewis Perdue. The judge also ruled out any copyright violations of Perdue's 1983 novel "The Da Vinci Legacy."

V for Va-jay-jay
I saw the stylish preview for the new movie V for Vendetta last night and it made me think of Dr. Bailey's nickname for her woman parts that she said on "Grey's Anatomy" a couple weeks ago when she was giving birth: "O'Malley, stop lookin' at my va-jay-jay!"

It also made me think of my very first V, which was a 1983 NBC miniseries about reptilian space aliens who come here to rape the Earth of its natural resources, much like the Bush administration and their Republican friends, the great American captains of industry.  In 1984, V was followed by another miniseries, V: The Final Battle, which apparently was not actually the "final battle" because later in 1984 a regular series, imaginitively titled "V", was launched.

Now, 22 years later, the original miniseries is supposedly being remade as V: The Second Generation. It's due to air sometime in 2007, but that's only if it actually ever gets filmed. This miniseries was originally intended to reassemble much of the original cast in a sequel. I would have loved to have seen what they could have done with a "20 years later" scenario, but perhaps some of the original cast members will be given new roles, hopefully more substantial than just cameo appearances. If this remake does finally make it onto NBC or ABC and it does well, then writer/director Kenneth Johnson will get an opportunity to tell his follow-up story.

Brokeback Madness
Brokeback Mountain parodies abound:

• Brokeback to the Future
• Brokeback Squadron (Top Gun)
• Brokeback Flatpoint ("Strangers With Candy")
• Brokeback Development ("Arrested Development")
• Brokeback Island ("Lost")
• Dumb and Dumber
• Star Wars: The Empire Brokeback
• Brokeback Fiction (Pulp Fiction)
• Brokeback Hour (Rush Hour)
• Brokeback Mobsters (Goodfellas)
• Brokeback Mount Doom (Lord of the Rings)
• Brokeback Titanic
• Brokeback Team America
• Brokeback Husky Mountain (Eight Below)
• Brokeback Gump
• Brokeback Trek
• SpongeBack Mountain

I think that in honor of the late Don Knotts, who died on Friday, someone should create a Brokeback Mayberry.

The Glory that is "Grey Gardens"
I guess dancing to Madonna's "Hung Up" (see the February 7th entry below) hasn't tired out the spirit of Little Edie Beale.

I saw the new Grey Gardens musical at Playwrights Horizons in New York on Saturday and I have to say that I thought it was brilliant! I loved every minute of this laughter-through-the-tears, based-on-a-true-story tale of an eccentric mother and daughter, both named Edith Bouvier Beale, who happened to be the aunt and cousin of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis.

Of course, it helps to have seen the 1975 documentary by Albert and David Maysles, which had been an underground cult classic before the days of VHS and DVD, but the music is so good, the characters are so vivid, and the story is so touching that I think a person could go into the theater without knowing anything about the two Edies and still thoroughly enjoy the production.

The costumes and sets were lovely, but it was the haunting, amusing, and touching performances of the two stars, Christine Ebersole and Mary Louise Wilson, that really made this a must-see theatrical event.

I know that much of the first act is almost complete fiction, but I don't have a problem with writers taking artistic license as long as people know what is fact and what isn't. The premise was interesting and made for an intriguing explanation for what the Edies' relationship turned out to be later in life. I don't want to give too much of the play's first act away, but in the documentary we got the sense that Little Edie believed that her mother was responsible for interfering in her relationships and chasing men out of her life. At the end of the first act, which takes place right before the party to celebrate Little Edie's fictional engagement to Joseph Kennedy Jr., a conversation transpires between Big Edie and Joseph Kennedy Jr. (whom I believe is used as a literary device representing a composite of Edie's youthful romances, whether rumored, imagined, or actual) that made me wonder if she makes her revelation to him innocently or if she intended what she said to have the effect on him that it did. Was she a proud mother complimenting her daughter's pluck and spunk, or was she a manipulative middle-aged woman who was afraid of growing old alone and who wanted to ensure that her daughter wouldn't get married and leave her?

Later in life, the real Little Edie claimed to have gone out on a few dates with Joe Kennedy Jr., but there was never an engagement. The scene, however, sums up what many viewers of the documentary have thought may or may not have happened between Big Edie and some of Little Edie's other suitors.

To see pictures from the musical, go here and here.

All of a sudden the Edies are in the spotlight again, but this time the circumstances are better than they were in the mid-1970's when the town of East Hampton, New York, tried to have the Beales' ramshackle estate condemned and their famous relative Jackie O. was called upon to help out. These two women who adored music and dancing would be tickled to know that they are now the subject of a stage musical (Little Edie was actually made aware of its early development before her death in 2002), there's an in-depth biography being written about them, and a new biopic is about to go before movie camera lenses this summer. Here's more on this latest piece of news from Variety...

Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange will star in "Grey Gardens," a fact-based drama about two eccentric relatives of Jacqueline Kennedy who made headlines when the health department threatened to raid their flea- and raccoon-infested East Hampton, N.Y., estate.

Commercials director Michael Sucsy wrote the script and will make his feature directing debut on the project this summer. He'll produce with Lucy Barzun and Rachael Horovitz.

Barrymore will play Little Edie, and Lange will play her mother, Big Edie Bouvier Beale, the socialite cousin and aunt, respectively, of Kennedy Onassis. The Edies made headlines around the world when Jackie O herself materialized to rescue her family from public disgrace.

The Edies were then the subjects of "Grey Gardens," a 1976 docu by David and Albert Maysles, whose rights will be part of the movie package.

Docu, which showed the women living in squalor, made a cult figure of Little Edie. She got a nightclub singing job as a result. Years after their deaths, the Edies have Web sites devoted to them as well as an Off Broadway play.

Sucsy, who summered in nearby Quogue, grew up with the legend of the women and hunted down rights to personal correspondence and journals that chronicle Little Edie's struggle to break free of her mother after they retreated from Park Avenue for the Hamptons.

The film will cover 40 years. Kennedy Onassis will be a character in the film, as will Ben Bradlee and Sally Quinn, who bought the crumbling mansion from Little Edie after her mother's death.

"You couldn't capture the eccentric nature of those women better than the documentary did, but it left me with so many questions of what led them there," Sucsy said.

CAA and Cinetic Media are packaging the project.

Lange, last seen in the Jim Jarmusch-directed "Broken Flowers," just made "Don't Come Knocking" and "Neverwas." Barrymore will next be seen in the Curtis Hanson -directed "Lucky You" and will star opposite Hugh Grant in the Marc Lawrence-directed "Music and Lyrics By."

And this is from Playbill.com:

Hollywood Will Till the Ground of the Legendary "Grey Gardens" Ladies
By Kenneth Jones
22 Feb 2006

The story of Jackie Kennedy Onassis' broken aunt and cousin, Edith and Edie Bouvier Beale, continues to be fertile soil.

In the 1970s the mother and daughter, former society ladies, were living in a cat-infested, filthy, crumbling estate called Grey Gardens in East Hampton on Long Island. A 1975 documentary film called "Grey Gardens" was a cult hit that inspired the current musical, Grey Gardens, now at Playwrights Horizons in Manhattan.

Variety reported that Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange will star in a non-musical feature film called "Grey Gardens." Michael Sucsy wrote the screenplay and will make his feature directing debut with it. Production begins this summer.

Barrymore ("The Wedding Singer") will play "Little Edie," and Lange (Broadway's The Glass Menagerie) will play her mother, "Big Edie" Bouvier Beale.

The documentary by David and Albert Maysles left Sucsy with questions, he told Variety. He sought personal correspondence and journals that tell more of Little Edie's history with her mother.

According to the trade paper, the movie will cover 40 years and characters will include Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, editor Ben Bradlee and Sally Quinn, who bought the raccoon-infested mansion after the elder Beale's death.

The new musical at Playwrights Horizons covers about 30 years, from a life-changing day in 1941 (when Little Edie's relationship with young Joe Kennedy fell apart, and Edith's marriage to Mr. Beale hit the rocks) to 1973 (when mother and daughter are cooking food over a hotplate at their bedside and listening to raccoons nibble at the frame of the house).

The new feature picture is not related to the musical, save for the subject matter. Both projects will include some imagining of events.

"The events of the play," reads a Playbill note for the musical, "are based on both fact and fiction."

The documentary that inspired both projects is a housebound experience set in the shambles itself. The film remains a creepy document of mental, physical and social decline.

The libretto for the musical is by Pulitzer Prize-winner Doug Wright (I Am My Own Wife), who borrows lines from the documentary to pepper an imagined Act One that has the whiff of Cole Porter's "High Society" to it (the score is by composer Scott Frankel and lyricist Michael Korie). Their Act Two is set in the crumbling home and more closely follows the documentary (including the more memorable lines from the ladies), spiked with songs, such as Frankel and Korie's haunting "Another Winter in a Summer Town."

Christine Ebersole plays matron Edith in 1941 and her daughter, Edie, in 1973. Mary Louise Wilson is the Medusa-like visage of Edith in old age in 1973. Sarah Gettelfinger plays the vibrant daughter Edie in 1941. Sarah Hyland plays young Jackie Bouvier. John McMartin is J.V. "Major" Bouvier, Edith's father.

Previews continue at Playwrights Horizons' Mainstage Theater on West 42nd Street. Opening is March 7. Previews began Feb. 10.

*

The cult movie, now on DVD with added special features, is a portrait of physical and mental decay that has fascinated viewers (and inspired some artists and designers) for 30 years.

According to Playwright Horizons, "Grey Gardens concerns the deliciously eccentric aunt and cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who were once among the brightest names in the pre-Camelot social register, and are now East Hampton's most notorious recluses, living in a dilapidated 28-room mansion. Facing an uncertain future, Edith Bouvier Beale and her adult daughter, 'Little' Edie, are forced to revisit their storied past and come to terms with it ? for better, and for worse."

Librettist Wright is the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of I Am My Own Wife, which also won the Tony Award for Best Play. He also penned the play Quills and the screenplay for its film version. Composer Frankel was musical director for Broadway's Falsettos and Putting It Together and lyricist Michael Korie co-wrote the opera Harvey Milk and lyrics for the Broadway-aimed Lucy Simon musical Zhivago.

Performances continue to March 26, but if critics and audiences take a shine to the show, expect it to have a commercial future.

Ebersole is a Tony Award winner for the revival of 42nd Street; Wilson was a Tony nominee for Cabaret and appeared in Off-Broadway's Full Gallop; Gettelfinger created the role of Jolene, the Oklahoma heiress in Broadway's Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and appeared in Nine.

The production features scenic design by Allen Moyer, costume design by five-time Tony Award winner William Ivey Long, lighting design by Tony Award winner Peter Kaczorowski, sound design by Brian Ronan and projections by Wendall K. Harrington. Orchestrations are by Tony Award winner Bruce Coughlin and music director will be Lawrence Yurman.

The performance schedule will be Tuesdays through Fridays at 8 PM, Saturdays at 2:30 & 8 PM and Sundays at 2:30 & 7:30 PM. Tickets are $65.

Grey Gardens is presented by special arrangement with Nathan Riley.

For ticket information, call Ticket Central at (212) 279-4200, or visit www.playwrighthorizons.org.

I've been a Drew Barrymore fan for most of her life (she comes from an acting dynasty, for God's sake!), but I'm skeptical about her ability to play Little Edie. However, I'm open-minded enough to give her a chance. In that vein, I never understood the outcry of criticism that I had seen on the internet after Renee Zellweger announced her desire to play Little Edie. I can understand that she might not be everyone's cup of tea, but she portrays vulnerability (Nurse Betty), quirkiness (Cold Mountain), and being on the edge of her wits (Chicago) very well. I'm not saying that she would have been my first choice to play Little Edie either, but as an actress I feel that she's completely capable and I think she definitely deserved the Oscar that she won for Cold Mountain. Reportedly, Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie, and Nicole Kidman (who hoped that Meryl Streep would co-star as Big Edie) had also expressed an interest in the role. I think that Paltrow and Kidman are fine enough actresses whom I could easily have imagined as Little Edie.

But I have hopes that this movie can and will be done right. I'm just glad that the stage musical, the upcoming book, and this movie will be giving the Edies the kind of attention they deserve.

F.Y.I.  Writer/Director Michael Sucsy and the Beales' handyman, Jerry "The Marble Faun" Torre, are among the members of the Grey Gardens Yahoo! Group that I belong to.

Dick Cheney has a Constitutional right to shoot his friend in the face!
Oh, wait... he wasn't performing duties as part of an organized militia this weekend, at the time he shot his hunting buddy in the face!? Maybe Dickie is just trying to be the next Aaron Burr. Burr was Thomas Jefferson's Vice President who, in 1804, shot and killed Alexander Hamilton (the handsome guy who graces the $10 bill and was our nation's first Secretary of the Treasury under George Washington and John Adams).

Do I even have to mention that we haven't actually needed a militia to protect our shores from foreign invaders since the creation of our government's official military after the Revolutionary War ended in the late 1700's? Do I also have to point out that in our nation's 230-year history we (the people) have never needed to take up arms against our own government for reasons of tyranny? [Actually, that prospect might not be too far off in our future if things keep going the way they have been.]

The Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America says the following:

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

That's it. Period. The end.

As you can see, it says nothing about being a guarantee of an individual's right to keep a gun for sport, to hunt, or even to protect one's self, family, or property from criminals.

The sole purpose mentioned by our forefathers was that of forming and maintaining "a well-regulated militia".

Personal ownership of handguns, rifles, and bazookas is not covered here. This right extends to "the people", a collective term, not to the individual.

Before the Revolutionary War, the British didn't want the American colonists to have too much firepower, and this left Americans vulnerable not only to attacks by French, Spanish, and Native peoples, but to the heavy hand of British rule itself. That is why it was necessary, in the days before our new government had formed its own army and navy, to allow the (collective) people to bear arms in case of invasion, or in the event that our young government turned out to be as tyrannical as that which we were breaking away from. The weapons of this "well-regulated militia" could have been stored in a centrally located arsenal or armory, not necessarily in individual homes.

The details and semantics are debatable, but the wording of the Amendment seems pretty clear. Unless, of course, you are a gun lover.

The best quotes about the Cheney incident came from the man who was Ronald Reagan's Press Secretary, James Brady, and his wife Sarah:

• James Brady—"Now I understand why Dick Cheney keeps asking me to go hunting with him." "I had a friend once who accidentally shot pellets into his dog - and I thought he was an idiot."
• Sarah Brady—"I've thought Cheney was scary for a long time. Now I know I was right to be nervous."

And of course the late night talk show hosts had a field day with the whole brouhaha:

• David Letterman: "The sad part is that before the trip, Donald Rumsfeld denied the guy's request for body armor."
• Jay Leno: "When people found out he shot a lawyer, his popularity [rose] to 92 percent."
• Jon Stewart: "Moms, dads, I can't emphasize this enough. Do not let your kids go on hunting trips with the vice president. I don't care what kind of lucrative contracts they're trying to land or energy regulations they're trying to get lifted, it's just not worth it."

Just for a ha-ha or two, watch Cheney's Got a Gun.