Thursday 16 October 2014



9 comments:

  1. But what rating did you assign? Connie was just in Chicago taking a copy editing class, and I asked her about "best seller" "bestseller" and "best-seller" and the way she tried to explain it -- I'm not very bright -- made it sound like a mutant virus. If it gets into the general language, we're all doomed.

    I didn't have the nerve to ask about "be$t $eller."

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  2. I mean, look at it. Amazon.ca has it two different ways, one beside the other.

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  3. Wish I'd been there to hear Connie's explanation, if only so that I'd have some idea which I should be using. Or at least which came first.

    I'm always at the ready to criticize Amazon, but here I commiserate.

    Choose one and run with it, I say! Run as far as you can… which in Rohmer's case is seven sentences. In the first chapter, 'What is a Best Seller?', we get 'best seller' (1st sentence), 'best sellers' (3rd sentence)', 'best seller' (5th sentence), 'best seller' (6th sentence) - then 'best-sellers' (7th sentence) and 'best-sellers' (7th sentence - again). It's a mess from that point on. Just look at all that talk about "Ross MacDonald".

    And I do mean, "talk" - after all the man's dictating, not writing.

    Really, the title should've been How to Dictate a Best Seller.

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  4. Dictated in the car! Remember Mannix had a phone in his car? A phone! Did we realize, as kids, that that was his superpower? Like being bionic, or in a wheelchair or something? Did you know people thought Mannix was really violent?

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  5. Nothing to do with Rohmer:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rWy6NoLgnE

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  6. There's nothing I want so much now as a punch card saying Retaliation.

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  7. Didn't you ever wonder how that computer typeface became the Mannix typeface? Turns out the original premise of the show was that Mannix was the only regular, goes-with-his-gut, tough guy at a detective agency with lots of computers and numbers-crunching, pencil-necked desk jockeys. They threw it out for "Mannix's secretary is black. He calls her on the phone from his car."

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  8. I was surprised that there was such a rabid Mannix following back when they weren't releasing the DVDs fast enough for them.

    Say - why does the URL for this comments thread read "http://readingrichardrohmer.blogspot.ca/2014/10/yesterday-anna-maria-tremonti.html#comment-form"?

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    Replies
    1. Stan, it all has to do with my love of Anna Maria Tremonti - that and the fact that an early version of the post was about the recent Current piece on Rohmer's mid-Canada. Thought I'd save my comments for another day.

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