Well, dear readers, not that anyone is counting, but it is a mere one day until the new year. Don’t forget, tomorrow will be our New Year’s Eve Rockin’ Bash, starring Guy Haines and a host of others. Mr. Donald Feltham has a very entertaining and totally perverse The Broadway Radio Show in honor of our celebration, which I recommend wholeheartedly. We will have cheese slices and ham chunks, of course, and a plentiful supply of Diet Coke with which to toast in the New Year. I don’t know why we just don’t toast in the New Year with toast, preferably rye, buttered. Oh, what fun we shall all have, Hainsies. We will wear our pointy hats and strew confetti hither and thither and yon and we will be of good cheer and we will dance the mambo and the mashed potato until the wee small hours of the morning and we will play “the name game” and we shall party hearty and we will all use our unseemly search box and search for unseemly things.
Speaking of our unseemly search box, after reading yesterday’s notes many of you came in and searched things. Even David Levy’s mother showed up. We’re giving that unseemly search box a real workout. Here is what I found out that was very interesting to me, unseemly search box-wise: I searched the words “cheese slices” and “ham chunks”, thinking that those would be clear winners in the search department. Well, do you know what? Well, of course you don’t know what, which is why I’m going to tell you what, because, frankly, you have a right to know what. But, in order for me to tell you what, which, by the way, you have a right to know, we must all do do that voodoo that we do so well – yes, we must all click that Unseemly Button below.
Of course, it should have been “do do that voodoo that you do so well”, but we took artistic license. However, the estate of Cole Porter just called and we have had our artistic license revoked. Where was I? Oh, yes, I was telling you what. The words “cheese slices” had something like 26 hits, while the word “ham chunks” had a mere 15 hits. Isn’t that surprising? I would have thought I’d used the words “cheese slices” 26 times in one set of notes, not all of the notes put together. That is simply not enough use of the words “cheese slices”, in my opinion. And the poor “ham chunks”. They were left out in the rain, like the cake. I remember so well that day at MacArthur Park when someone left the cake out in the rain. I didn’t think I could take it ’cause it took so long to bake it and frankly I’ll never have that recipe again, oh no. What am I, Jimmy Webb all of a sudden? Those lyrics have such candor. Yes, you heard it here, dear readers, Jimmy Webb wrote with much candor – in fact, you might just think of it as Candor and Webb.
The winner in the search contest, as you might expect, was “unseemly”, which is as it should be. But even the word “unseemly” only turned up 46 times. If we say it 30 more times we shall have 76 Unseemlys and we can sing:
76 Unseemlys led the big parade,
With a 110 ham chunks close behind.
We’ve had several people answer the trivia contest, but keep sending in your guesses – I’m not saying whether we have a winner or not because that would be unseemly. You see, we’ll reach 76 Unseemlys in no time. About now you’re probably wondering what today’s title, “Proof”, has to do with these here notes. Well, I’ll tell you what it has to do with these here notes. Since finishing my novel, I have proofed it at least ten times. And every time I proof it I find more errors to fix. Then I’ve had other people proof it and they’ve found even more errors and typos to fix. And every time I think I’ve fixed every single error and typo, I find a few more. It’s almost as if someone is inserting more errors and typos, just to confound me. I believe someone is giving me the Gaslight treatment, novel-wise. Someone is having sport with me. Proofing is hard, dear readers, but it must be done, because we must not have any unseemly errors or typos in our novel, although, that said, there are errors and typos in the novels of Mr. Ernest Hemingway, Mr. John Steinbeck, Mr. Stephen King and many others. They usually fix them for subsequent printings, but I point it out only to show that even the masters have things that get by their editors. In any case, I’m having a couple of people go through it again, this time with a fine tooth comb. Okay, stop the notes, I want to get off. “Fine tooth comb”? Have you ever seen three words look more stupid together. That is just a stupid grouping of words. “Fine tooth comb”. First off, what is a comb doing with teeth? A comb doesn’t eat, a comb doesn’t floss, a comb doesn’t have cavities and root canals and crowns. What a comb does have is a totally useless “b”. And why a “fine” tooth comb? Why not an “okay” tooth comb or a “pretty good” tooth comb? And just how is a “fine tooth comb” going to ferret out errors and typos, that’s what I’d like to know. And who’s to say a hair brush wouldn’t turn up more errors and typos? Yes, damn everyone’s eyes, let’s go through the book with a fine tooth hair brush and toss that old fine tooth comb asunder. Toss it asunder, I say. After all, it’s a Sunday, which is a fine day to toss things asunder. Apparently, lucidity isn’t going to be part of these here notes. Apparently, lucidity has been tossed asunder on a Sunday. Oh, well, we’ll try for some lucidity tomorrow. After all, I Love Lucidity.
Tomorrow I shall tell you all about the film Vanilla Sky, and I shall continue my wrapup of the musicals that I saw in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. And, of course, I shall announce the winner of our unseemly trivia contest.