Ought

Was it the food?

2007-01-25T08:16:00.000-05:00

Mystifying headline of the day:

Curry Strains Calf
In Fourth Quarter
And Does Not Return

—NYT

Angry nudfo

2006-11-09T22:36:00.000-05:00

Sandy: And there was nothing else?
Kirsten: Nothing.
Sandy: Angry, nudfo, chocolate love. Nood-fo, nuhd-fo, is that a word?
Kirsten: Not that I know of.
Sandy: When did you find this?
Kirsten: Just now. When I went to see if the boys had anything to give to the clothing drive.
Sandy: You tried calling them?
Kirsten: No answer.
Sandy: You know what I think this is?
Kirsten: A coded message.
Sandy: Nothing. It's probably the name of a band, Seth wrote it on a piece of paper and put it in his pocket. Relax, sweetheart.
(Sandy's phone rings)
Sandy: Hello.
Seth: Dad, it's me. Did you get my note, I had to write it in code in case Ryan found it.
Sandy: Right, the note.
Seth: Yeah, he says he's not going to do anything to Volchek...
Sandy: Wait! Wait! What?
Seth: I thought you got the note?
Sandy: No, no, no! I got the "Angry nudfo chocolate love" note, I didn't get the one about Ryan following Volchek!
Kirsten: What!?
Seth: It's an anagram.
Sandy: Oh yeah? Well since when is there a "g" in "Ryan"?
Seth: I was in a rush, I had to add a few letters so it made sense.

—The O.C., October 8 episode

Misreads

2006-10-10T13:29:00.000-04:00

"Great Decorating Ideas for Fall" misread as "Great Decorating Ideas for EVIL."

Misread of the Day #2

2006-09-24T10:31:00.000-04:00

From CNN.com:

The disc is "more in the vein of `The Black Album' than `The Blueprint,' " he tells the magazine. "I've been experimenting with things, different types of music."

We read the last word as "magic."

Meltdown

2006-08-23T16:44:00.000-04:00

"Dr. Okounkov’s work has found use in describing the changing surfaces of melting crystals. The boundary between melted and non-melted is created randomly, but the random process inevitably produces a border in the shape of a heart."

—Kenneth Chang, "Highest Honor in Mathematics is Refused," New York Times, August 22, 2006

Fry cooks

2006-08-21T08:48:00.000-04:00

"Presbyterians, as you may know although Milton probably did not, is an anagram of Britney Spears."

—Stephen Fry, The Ode Less Travelled

Good night

2006-08-03T23:46:00.000-04:00

"Freshly baked while you sleep."

—Slogan of sorts, printed inside cake box from Fay Da Bakery

Misread of the Day #1

2006-07-25T11:29:00.000-04:00

We read a headline in today's Times as saying "Study of Songbirds Finds High Levels of Memory." Fascinating, we thought. Of course! It makes perfect sense. They have complicated, intricate songs that require a high level of memorization. There goes science, proving what we already knew in our heart of hearts. Ah, look at the photo of the songbird, looking very sage and self-satisfied...brilliant, brilliant little thing.

An hour or two later, headline was glimpsed again with its true wording: "...High Levels of Mercury."

Oh.

(First part of an occasional featurette.)

Phrase of the day

2006-07-15T09:43:00.000-04:00

"The originals used for this album [Django Reinhardt—Volume 2: The London Deccas (1938 & 1939)] are a mixed bag—many English Decca shellac pressings, a couple of American Deccas and a few vinyl tests."

—Ted Kendall, liner notes to Django Reinhardt: The Classic Recordings in Chronological Order

The Nomen

2006-06-20T23:24:00.000-04:00

Oughtie Cha Revival brings us this bit of ominous nomenclature from Wikipedia:

The 1986 edition of Guinness World Records lists Marilyn vos Savant as having the highest recorded IQ with a score of 228 (+5 standard deviations from the mean) on the Stanford-Binet scale when tested as a child.

Got as a clue

2006-05-31T22:41:00.000-04:00

Ready for some charmingly antiquated word-fun?

Then Enquire Within!

(Courtesy Rasa Ming-Ozu.)

Title bout

2006-04-09T11:33:00.000-04:00

What did those Ecstasy enthusiasts decide to call their mixed-up magazine?

Cryptic, poorly constructed riddle

2006-04-03T09:53:00.000-04:00

Going to look at the "rearranged" paintings made you sneeze—you had these over there.

Flowers for anagram

2006-02-24T07:20:00.000-05:00

We've been away for months now, immersed in numbers. No, it isn't that we've been preparing Ought Enterprises' financial statements for the taxman—rather, the sudoku (sometimes su doku) bug has bit us, hard.

Only trouble is, we're actually not that good at it. We had a spell of competence, filling in the grids provided in our local free daily paper. Then...we started making unforced errors. And it kept happening. The whole thing is very Flowers for Algernon.

The upshot is, not much wordplay in our brainpans these past weeks, save for what Oughties have come to know as "almost anagrams." That's right: Anagrams that don't quite work. Here are two. Can you send us more?

Mati Unt (Estonian writer) ≠ titanium (element)

Montana (state) ≠ anatomy (field of study)

5 on a Joyride

2005-12-30T13:34:00.000-05:00

Oughtie Aviva Biel-Gott brings our attention to a mundane sentence from Nabokov's Pnin:

"When Joan with a bagful of provisions, two magazines, and three
parcels, came home at a quarter past five, she found in the porch
mailbox a special-delivery air-mail from her daughter."

...or is it mundane?

And . . . scene!

2005-12-11T19:54:00.000-05:00

If you were writing a story with a character named Hoffmann who was always late to important social events, you could have another character joke, "Oh yeah—E.T.A. Hoffmann."

"As in the story writer?" another character could respond, incredulous.

"Nah—as in 'Estimated Time of Arrival'!"

Vintage—Eating—Tinge—Gent—Ten—Né—"e"

2005-12-04T23:27:00.000-05:00

Rasa Ming-Ozu has unearthed a cache of "slimmables" from the 1990s! To play at home, copy the boldfaced words on a piece of scratch paper; slim away; then check your answers!

versify
verify
fiver
five
fie
if
i

omnibus
nimbus
numbs
snub
sun
us

startling
starling
staring
string
sting
sing
sin
in
i

elastics
elastic
castle
least
east
tea
at
a

benign
being
bing
bin
in
i

pottery
poetry
trope
port
tor
or
o

What going is on here?

2005-12-04T00:21:00.000-05:00

Sign at hair salon:

SMILE!
YOU
BEING
ARE
WATCHED

Message on Sorrento's Cheese float, drifting into Little Italy:

GREETINGS
SEASON'S

Has Yoda been doing some non-Jedi content providing?

Multiplex scrambler

2005-12-01T08:33:00.000-05:00

What new movie is as rainy as an anagram?

(Winner receives exclusive high-fashion, wholly fictional OUGHT MAGAZINE T-shirt!)

Sam I Am

2005-11-08T14:15:00.000-05:00

"He is not a Bush crony, and—notwithstanding the curious happenstance that 'Samuel Alito' is an anagram of 'I am a sellout'—his integrity is not in question."

—Hendrik Hertzberg

(Thanks to Oughtie Ken Bergben!)

The Effect of Living Backwords

2005-11-06T09:22:00.000-05:00

We were up by the old stomping grounds yesterday—well, a bit north of the old s.g., in truth—and began noticing the names of apartment buildings. Walking on West 122nd Street, we noticed an abode called "THE DELAWARE."—with a period. Love it! A period! Why not!

Our favorite was RELDNAS HALL. "Reldnas" sounded a bit too science fiction, like a character in Asimov. We put on our mirror-glasses to espy a more likely surname: SANDLER.

We always love it when people do things backward.

Some months ago, in the mid-50s (we're talking streets, not decades), we saw a sanitation/waste truck attending to a dumpster. The vehicle had the Spanish-tinted name NACIREMA.

Two slimmables

2005-10-14T09:22:00.000-04:00

It's been raining for two days straight—best thing to do is stay indoors, warm a cup of cider, and do some "slimmables"!

Here are two recent works by expert Oughtie Rasa Ming-Ozu. (For instructions, check out this post from June.)

comprise
promise
impose
poems
mope
mop
om
o

compromised
compromise
spiceroom
comprise
promise
primes
prism
prim
rim
mi
i

Why not try precipitation and thunderstorm?

Horse sense

2005-09-28T20:52:00.000-04:00

It's been a long time, Oughties . . . hello? Anyone there?

The Village Voice turns 50 this year. Featured in the bottom right-hand corner of the front page of its very first issue is an enigmatic little tidbit headlined "Manuscript by author, age 4, goes on sale." The MS in question is a joke by some kid named Phil (presumably now 54 years old!) — it runs:

"A horse can't say yes and can't say no—but a donkey can."

We have thought about this riddle several times a week for the past decade. Any Oughties care to figure it out?

From the archives of Parkus Grammaticus

2005-08-13T12:26:00.000-04:00

Our friends at Parkus Grammaticus sent us this "Rejected script for Yellow Pages radio spot, c. 1998." Enjoy!

* * * * *

—Honey?
[No reply]

—Honey?
[No reply, but from a different part of the room]

—Honey, can I have some more lard?

[pause]
[pause]

—More what?

—lard

—lard?
—lard

—why?
—I’m hungry.

—The only lard left is the old lard from Halloween.

—That sounds fine.

—I’ll fetch it from the larder but you’ll have to prepare it yourself. I threw out my back.

—Fine.
—Fine.

—Fine. Why’d you throw out your back? I thought it was new.
[pause] —Can I borrow your phone?
—Who are you calling?
—God.

—Woah. [pause] How did you get the number?

—Most people don’t realize that you can find His number in the yellow pages. [pause] Well that’s not entirely true. There was one year when they mistakenly printed his number. This was in 1956. They thought it was the number for G.O.D.—Great Opportunities in Denial. It was a temp agency. They put God’s number in by accident. Only one person called.

—You mean…Father?

—Bingo.
—That’s why he’s omnipotent now?

—Yes.

—Is he God?

—Yes.

FINIS!

News flash!

2005-08-12T00:52:00.000-04:00

Ought News brings you this exclusive—Republican senatorial candidate and Westchester County D.A. Jeanine Pirro bungled her candidacy speech Wednesday when, during an attack on Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton, she was speechless for 32 seconds as she tried to locate a missing section of her speech. "Could I have page 10?" she asked plaintively.

What was on this absent page?

Sources tell Ought News that the page was destroyed by a concerned aide, who discovered that Pirro had written these words on it.

New complicated joke

2005-08-11T08:14:00.000-04:00

In the French world, an English traveler can find this beverage—almost.

As in eyeballs

2005-07-23T08:08:00.000-04:00

This "slimmable" comes courtesy of Rasa Ming-Ozu:

retreated
reteared (as in eyeballs)
retread
retard
darer
dear
ade
ad
a

Our friends over at The Dizzies (thedizzies.blogspot.com) have a B.S. Johnson poem up that has a slimmable aspect to it.

F. Un

2005-07-20T21:18:00.000-04:00

The writer Jonathan Ames has another name—if you use his first initial with his surname, you get J. Ames, or "James."

Curiously, the narrator of his novel The Extra Man is Louis Ives—L. Ives, or "Lives."

A friend of Ought who used to work at a literary agency said that the company would abbreviate authors' names by using the first three letters of the last name plus the first letter of the first.

Thus Frederick Barthelme = "Barf"
Susan Sontag = "Sons"
Italo Calvino = "Cali"

Submissions to either of these vaguely amusing contests are welcome.

Everybody was funk fit hugging

2005-07-20T21:15:00.000-04:00

Anagram of the day:

TAE KWON DO = O, TAKEDOWN!

Complaining becomes elective

2005-06-26T11:41:00.000-04:00

In the Sunday Times, we learn about Nic Harcourt, influential DJ for KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic. The name of the show is an example of what those of us in the word trade call a double remove: the title plays off of Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra not once ("Morning" for "Mourning") but twice ("Eclectic" for "Electra").

We generally do not approve of this, and we know editor-types who refrain from saddling a headline with a double-remove pun. We also disapprove of "Eclectic" for "Electra"—that's a bit too wide of a variation, though it's offset somewhat by the homophony of "Morning"/"Mourning."

Worse is that there's a Saturday version of the show called Weekend Becomes Eclectic—a triple remove!

Atlas shrugged

2005-06-26T09:09:00.000-04:00

We just woke from a dream in which it was suggested, in the pages of a mysterious atlas, that residents of the Hawaiian island of Kauai had a word that was 300,000 letters long.

More from Rasa

2005-06-09T22:37:00.000-04:00

"1) Re: BOGGLE, JUMBLE, SCRABBLE: When i was a tot i played with my parents' '60s-era game of SCRIBBAGE. I believe it was a Parker Bros. game.

"2) This reader's PET PEEVE: those horrible trade names so prevalent during the '90s Internet boom that stuck two words together sans letter space. I worked at a journal called OnEarth, the quarterly published by NRDC, which was supposed to be clever.

"There were so many others. can anyone think of any that were even more offensive?"

Palindrome of the day

2005-06-08T21:57:00.000-04:00

"Lonely Tylenol"

(Courtesy: Rasa Ming-Ozu)

String theory: a new contest!

2005-06-08T21:48:00.000-04:00

Rasa Ming-Ozu, currently ensconced in one of this country's better artists' colonies, writes:

"Reading OUGHT MAG this afternoon, [I] was reminded of an obsessive word game [I] used to play with self [...] in 1999. [It] went like this:

Find words that one can remove one letter from and still have a word, like

STARTLING
STARLING
STARING
STRING
STING
SING
SIN
IN
I

etc."

Oughties! Can you come up with with a similar string of words, beginning with one that has at least as many letters as STARLING? We think you can!

Probably not

2005-06-07T09:26:00.000-04:00

We were on the 6 train a couple weeks ago, during our yearly visit to New York City, and unaccountably found ourselves without anything to read. So we stared at the logos on our fellow passengers' bags. The woman to our right had a bag from a store called Barami—or was she trying to signal, in reverse, "I'm Arab"?

The new tower of Babel

2005-05-28T21:04:00.000-04:00

Ought Magazine is looking for a new home—possibly in this building.

The Ice Age

2005-05-27T07:36:00.000-04:00

Exclusive — Breaking American Idol Scandal — Ought Magazine reporters have discovered that American Idol runner-up Bo Bice, whose Skynyrdian swagger and Gayle-force mane captured over 5 trillion votes this season, barely needs to lift a finger in order to transform his name into "Bob Ice."

That is, short for "Robert Ice."

The ugly organ

2005-05-24T23:35:00.000-04:00

This is, by some lights, the ugliest site ever.

The Gay 90s

2005-05-24T19:17:00.000-04:00

Passing by Cleopatra's Needle after work—a restaurant on upper Broadway, serving up Middle Eastern cuisine and limpid jazz—we noticed a chalkboard easel outside, listing the evening's specials.

Someone had erased the second "m" in "Hommos."

Quality control

2005-05-21T22:07:00.000-04:00

We thank all our contributors, who scour the globe in search of lexical curiosities. We publish as many pieces as we can. Occasionally, however, even the best field reporter turns in a piece that just . . . doesn't . . . work.

Here's a recent example, of something that we call a "lapsed palindrome":

"This is so weird"
By [name withheld]

We were passing a bodega, our new copy of the new New York Review of Books atop our head serving as a makeshift brolly, when we overheard the cashier talking on the phone.

"No, I did. No, A.J. . . ."

We didn't stick around to hear the rest—it was raining—but those words haunted us. Why? It was only later, on the subway, while reading a piece in the NYRB on Terry Schiavo, that the connection was made.

The byline on the piece: Joan Didion.

Where am I?

2005-05-21T17:30:00.000-04:00

Welcome, NYC Bloggers. If you're looking for our sister blog, The Dizzies, please find it at thedizzies.blogspot.com.

Very best,
Your friends at Ought Magazine

The Corrections

2005-05-16T12:50:00.000-04:00

From this Sunday's Times:

Because of a transcription error, an article last Sunday in Summer Movies, Part 2 of this section, about the director Don Roos rendered a word incorrectly in his comment about the use of onscreen titles in his film "Happy Endings." He said, "I love foreign films, which have a lot of signage in them" - not "porno films."

Naked is the best disguise

2005-05-10T08:20:00.000-04:00

Nudity and untidy are anagrams.

Music Po!

2005-05-09T00:44:00.000-04:00

A word website taught us this about the expression "po-faced"—we reproduce it here because it mentions a great friend of one of Ought's favorite authors, Anthony Powell.

"It’s actually quite a modern word, first recorded only in 1934 in the book Music Ho! by Constant Lambert, the British music critic and composer: 'I do not wish, when faced with exoticism, to adopt an attitude which can best be described by the admirable expression "po-faced". We cannot live perpetually in the rarefied atmosphere of the austerer classics'. Mr Lambert’s phrasing clearly suggests that the term was by then already well-known, though perhaps within a restricted group (it has the feel of public-school slang about it)."

Posh spice

2005-05-04T09:39:00.000-04:00

“The P&O Line* has always made much of the fact that it gave the word ‘posh’ to the English idiom. The word began life as a booking clerk’s term in the late nineteenth century; it meant Port Out-Starboard Home, and a wise traveler of the day stipulated this formula when booking his cabin to the east and back for it put him on the shaded side of the ship both ways, away from the fiercest heat of the day on the passage through Suez and the Red Sea. Posh became a word that did for the whole style of passage by P&O, and it was the sort of style which the North Atlantic, so vulgarly competitive on various levels of ostentation, never really achieved, except perhaps in the White Star ships, which in their day were much more the gentleman’s way than even the genteel though less fashionable Cunarders were. They were floating country houses rather than floating hotels, offering the same impeccable protocols and mannered informality, and this was very much the tone of the P&O.”

—Noël Mostert, Supership (1974)

*Editors' note: “P&O” was short for “Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company”

Mas cerca

2005-04-24T15:03:00.000-04:00

From the Department of Gently Mangled English:

On the sliding door to the freezer at our local Tasti-D-Lite purveyor, we found this sign:

KEEP CLOSE PLEASE.

From the heart

2005-04-22T11:08:00.000-04:00

We had quite an involved night of dreams, concluding with the penetrating insight that EARTH was anagram to HATER. Imagine our perplexity when we woke to discover that today is . . . Earth Day.

Two turntables and an anagram

2005-04-18T15:54:00.000-04:00

This deeply moving missive comes to us from Sica Squalls, our London stringer, now in the depths of a flu-like condition:

"I sleep all day and have a pumpkin head full of wet sand. anyway whilst lying in bed earlier my eyes rested blurrily on a nearby copy of the BELIEVER, and the letters swum together and rearranged themselves and i thought 'Eli Reverb, what a great name that would be for a Beck-like recording artist.' but then I realized I was missing an R. then i went back to sleep."

Recent discoveries

2005-04-09T19:11:00.000-04:00

1. *Satiny* and *sanity* are anagrams
2. *Permanent* and *pentameter* are not anagrams

No snare, P?

2005-04-05T10:47:00.000-04:00

From Mark Peranson's "Editor's Note," in the latest issue of Cinema Scope magazine:

"At this year's Rotterdam film festival, one comment on the magazine's direction arrived from the valiant Pierre Rissient, who, despite being pleased with what he saw, thought that perhaps the magazine was a bit too safe. In response, here is the palindromic Issue 22. (Dammit, I'm mad.)"

The Omen II

2005-03-27T23:25:00.000-05:00

Ought contributor Ed writes:

"Loved today's Times piece about 'nomen et omen,' the idea that one's name is prophetic. (E.g., doctors with the last name 'Doctor.' Was that what that Thompson Twins song was all about?) I recall that, back around third grade, I was very eager to learn of anyone else sharing my first name, which isn't wildly rare but seemed so back then, in a sea of Jims and Johns and (it seemed) various Todds. I was especially gratified to come across authors named Ed, and no doubt kept a list of such discoveries.

"I remember with particular clarity a slim collection of sports facts—at that age, one reads all sorts of things, stories, comics, and especially trivia omnium-gatherums, of which the Guinness Book is the ultimate exponent—the cramped spine of which bore the mysterious 'Ed. by John Smith.' (Well—something like that.) It was the "Ed." that hypnotized me—was Ed also part of his name? Matters were cleared up slightly by the full 'Edited by . . . ' tag on the front cover, but the abbreviation continued to exert its power.

"Nearly thirty years on, I'm an editor. A couple times a week, I sign off on page proofs, above a line marked 'ed'—and I always think of that little paperback book, its spine so small that even the word 'Edited' had to be edited."

Thanks for sharing, Ed. Or "ed."

Third base

2005-03-19T23:10:00.000-05:00

A long letter from Ought contributor Parker Edwards:

I was delighted to hear—over a recent dim sum with Tara St. Legano and D.D. Victor—that D.D.'s been revising the MS of his new novel by changing the first person voice to the third person. Delight not because I envied him the labor—but because it reminded me of this news flash from last year, regarding the novelist John Irving's latest project (passage taken from an article by Roger Friedman on the Fox News website):

"I turned in the book to Random House," Irving said. "They loved it and paid me a great deal of money. The novel was scheduled to come out. It took me five years to write it. And then, 28 days ago, I woke up and realized it was all wrong."

The result is that Irving, who writes in longhand on yellow legal pads and not on a word processor or even a typewriter (you may remember those), is rewriting every single word of "Until I Find You" from a first-person perspective to a third-person one.

And he's got to do it fast. For Random House to make its summer 2005 publication date, Irving must turn in the new version by this Christmas at the latest.

Whew! Can he do it? Undoubtedly. But what a thing to put yourself through, I said.

"It means, first of all, the book will be shorter," he said. The current manuscript-page count is around 1,000. By changing to third person, and shedding the "I," less will have to be explained, so the novel should shed some weight.

* * *

Were D.D. and the J-dawg continuing—or establishing—or do I mean cementing—a tradition? I felt there was another connection to be made, but couldn't put my finger on it till the other night, as I perused (upon recommendation from my friends over at The Dizzies) Harry Stephen Keeler's The Mystery of the Fiddling Cracksman (Dutton, 1934):

"[...] You see my publishers [...] finally decided that my book would be more subtle—yes, I know I haven't even told you yet what it's about—but I will—well, they decided that it would be more subtle if narrated in the third person form instead of the first person. And so since they want to slap it on press inside of ten days, I've been sitting in a hotel room there on Broadway with a coffee percolator, changing tenses, pluperfects, points of view and whatnot for three days and nights, and having to retype the whole 80,000 words because nobody alive could read my revisions [...]"

As those Dizzyheads put it: "HSK always leads the way!"

Actually, let's try this again. From the top:

"*He* was delighted to hear—over a recent dim sum . . . "

Perot to rep?

2005-03-08T22:30:00.000-05:00

From our good friends at the Harry Stephen Keeler Society comes this politically charged palindrome:

"Dubya won?! . . . No way, bud!"

Our attempts to formulate some mirror moves for Bush's Democratic opponent yielded only this cryptic formulation:

Kerry = Yrrek [i.e., "Iraq"?]

O Dolby!

2005-03-06T20:31:00.000-05:00

Yes, Park Chan-wook's film OLD BOY (or as it seems to be written these days, OLDBOY—does this mean we can scrab with it?) certainly gratifies sonically—but the anagram we were looking for was a bit more sanguine: BLOODY!

And our very simple anagram that throws a spotlight on the theatrical nature of "The Gates" is: THE STAGE.

Intimate jest

2005-03-01T16:31:00.000-05:00

Ennis Mild, pensive after the Oscars, tells us:

"I came up with a JOHN CASSAVETES anagram: JEST CAN SAVE HOS."

Any other combinations, Oughties?

* * *

Solutions to the "Old Boy" and "The Gates" anagram challenges will be posted soon—it's not too late to register your answer! For those of you skeptical of the "value" of anagrams, consider that they indeed constitute the great art—or as we here at Ought call it, ARS MAGNA.

Dine? Eclairs!

2005-02-27T18:43:00.000-05:00

In honor of Oscar night, Ought is asking its readers to submit anagrams derived from the name of French director Claire Denis. To get you started, take a gander at this offering from Ennis Mild, our esteemed Cape Cod correspondent:

AS I RECLINED

And Sica Squalls, our U.K. stringer, has come up with the equally evocative EDENIC LAIRS.

* * *

In other news, our friends over at The Dizzies have been raving about "The Gates," Christo and Jeanne-Claude's Central Park extravaganza. We were able to view some charming footage of the artwork yesterday, and noted with satisfaction how crossing each threshold, curtain billowing above, had a happy-making theatrical effect.

Question, Oughties: Can you scramble the project's name to arrive at a suitably histrionic alternative moniker? We think you can!

Bold "oy!"

2005-02-23T15:00:00.000-05:00

Yesterday we caught JLG's Masculine Feminine (we are the children of Dom DeLuise and Pocari Sweat) and dug especially the final title card, in which letters were shot out of FEMININE to arrive at FIN.

Have any Oughties watched the Cannes runner-up Old Boy, from our friends in Korea? Park Chan-wook's ultraviolent memory caper also has a self-descriptive anagram in its title. Can you discover what it is?

Fore!

2005-02-22T22:39:00.000-05:00

Few—okay, no—Oughties responded to the "Cyrano" challenge of last week, so we feel a little silly giving the answer—but here it is:

CRAYON

Here's another challenge:

Winter's still here, and we can't hit the links for a few more months yet. What to do? How about a round or two of "word golf"? That was Nabokov's term for this game of linguistic transformation (or rather, Kinbote's, in Pale Fire); Lewis Carroll is credited with inventing the pastime, dubbing the resultant garlands "word chains."

Take two words with the same number of letters—say, PALE and FIRE. Changing only one letter at a time, transform PALE to FIRE, with each "move" creating a word. Thus: PALE—PANE—PINE—FINE—FIRE (four moves).

The other day, we saw a lovely grocery-store cashier wearing a baseball cap affixed with a little piece of cardboard that said CASH ONLY. Your challenge, Oughties: Change CASH to ONLY, in as few moves as possible.

Good luck! Or rather, GOOD—HOOD—HOOK—LOOK—LOCK—LUCK!

A pal on palindromes

2005-02-21T16:58:00.000-05:00

Our old friend "Related H." relates this logophilic memory:

"During freshman year, I became obsessed with creating palindrome sentences. I did it all the time. I can only remember one [now]: BLAKE DOTES ON NOTE: 'GET ON NOSE TO DEKALB.'

"There was also one involving T. Eliot and a toilet."

* * *

(Editor's note: We seem to recall Nabokov dismissing the "Waste Land" poet as "Toile, T.S.," in a letter to Edmund Wilson.)

Motto repair

2005-02-21T15:37:00.000-05:00

The third mangled meaning (see previous post):

At brunch, we spotted a woman wearing a white zippered sweatshirt that bore a curious motto across the front, in blue cursive: Unscribblable.

This seemed terrific—a motto both self-referential and deeply ambiguous. We gave ourselves a mental high-five.

Then our eyes untangled the script into the more mundane "Abercrombie."

Communication breakdown

2005-02-20T22:54:00.000-05:00

Last week we were telling Moss Jervins that we had to pick up some dry cleaning. She seemed stunned. She asked us to repeat what we'd just said.

"Oh," she responded with relief. "I thought you said you had to pick up some drag queens."

Then today in the grocery store we were asked if we had seen Oprah. We don't usually watch the queen of daytime talk, but . . . oh wait, okrah.

There was a third incident, but it eludes us at the moment.

Car talk

2005-02-19T21:44:00.000-05:00

Today we saw a hapless cabbie try to drive into an apartment-complex parking lot—he misjudged the relative curb-ramp positions, and wound up grinding the front underpart (that's the technical term) of his vehicle on the sidewalkish bit. He backed up, making a scraping sound, accelerated again—and further agitated the car. It looked like he might rattle the fender off, but it seemed to stay put, mostly.

Two other people observed the unfortunate affair. They were of an earlier generation. One of them scolded the uncomprehending cabbie: "You've gotta watch where you're driving, you knucklehead!" And, walking away, he muttered again: "Knucklehead."

Later, down in the garment district, we heard one fellow bark playfully to two of his lackeys, who were lugging blue plastic bags full of goods: "Hurry up, ladies!"

Somehow these "insults of yore" put us in a good mood.

* * *

Hey Oughties: Those of you itching for another lexical challenge have your work cut out for you.
In 10 seconds or less, try to think of a single-word anagram for this week's name:

CYRANO

Life of pie

2005-02-13T19:36:00.000-05:00

We know this is Ought magazine, and not The New York Times, but we'd feel bad if we didn't spotlight two recent delights from the pages of the Grey Lady.

In a February 6 article entitled "He Must Be a Dream to Cook For," we learn:

"Breatharianism, a marginal New Age movement that some have traced to the practices of Tibetan monks and Indian holy men, has also been labeled a hoax and a cult. For example, Wiley Brooks, the founder of the Breatharian Institute of America, claimed not to have eaten for 19 years when news reports emerged in the 1980's that he had been spotted surreptitiously eating a chicken pie."

And on Friday, A.O. Scott's review of Godard's Masculine Feminine concludes by turning JLG's formulation "The Children of Marx and Coca-Cola" into "the children of Ronald Reagan and Red Bull."

Of course, we are the children of Selchow & Righter.

Psychic friends

2005-02-13T17:38:00.000-05:00

Every now and then we think of something, and the thought finds a counterpart in reality. About a decade ago, walking in Manhattan on a freezing day, the phrase "piles of shattered glass" came to mind, and a few steps later, the whole side of a bus-stop shelter crumbled into a vitreous heap.

In our last post, we mentioned that rare breed of sportsman who prefers eating bicycles to riding them. The next day, playwright Arthur Miller died at 89. This is from Marilyn Berger's obit in The New York Times, dated February 11:

"But Mr. Miller called playwriting the hardest work of all. 'You know,' he said, 'a playwright lives in an occupied country. He's the enemy. And if you can't live like that, you don't stay. It's tough. He's got to be able to take a whack, and he's got to swallow bicycles and digest them.'"

Thought: Isn't it strange that your obituary writer should share the name of your most famous spouse?

Are you 'Tough' enough?

2005-02-10T08:04:00.000-05:00

Mandragora Media, which owns Bicep Monthly, Abs Gazette, and other fine titles, has been in talks with your friends here at Ought regarding the possible acquisition of your favorite clearinghouse for wordsmithery, vague gossip, and semi-jokes. At the 11th hour we've left the table, after learning that the folks at Mandragora only want the letters O-U-G-H-T, which they seek to rearrange as TOUGH: The Magazine for Mountaineers, Decathletes, and People Who Eat Bicycles in Order to Get Into the Guinness Book of World Records.

In other news, we recently watched the Super Bowl (and played a little Scrabble) with old friend Brit Grits, who was passing through town en route to Clinton, New Jersey. He was scheduled to perform songs from his contemplative new solo album, Sexual Carbonation III-IV, for a room full of nurses. Hope the show went well, Brit!

More on Morgenbesser

2005-02-03T22:34:00.000-05:00

"In the 1970s, a student of Maoist inclination asked him ifhe disagreed with Mao's saying that a proposition can be true or false at the same time. Dr. Morgenbesser replied, 'I do and I don't.'" —The Globe and Mail, 9/04

[Soundtrack: J. Geils Band, "I Do."]

Alexander pain

2005-01-27T22:49:00.000-05:00

Our bosom friend, the brilliant and dapper D.M.S. Shrapnel, sent us a postcard from Barbados, where he is seeking public office, or maybe mostly sitting by the pool. It made us inexplicably happy and so we reproduce some of it here:

"Barbados is a friendly place where the locals don't mind making change for bus fare. At night the air carries the continual chirping of thumbnail-size frogs. They're cute but elusive! . . . Sometimes Barbadian children keep shorthaired black-bellied sheep as pets, which no doubt is the subject of children's stories and school playes. I wanted to go to the movies tonight but the only theater on the island is showing Alexander. The other one burned down the day I flew in. . . . "

Boba fete

2005-01-19T20:54:00.000-05:00

We're in sunny Irvine, California, covering the shooting of Hello Monkey Laundromat 2029, which is being staged entirely in Vietnamese sandwich shops, airport sushi bars, and boba tea parlors. Several dozen locals are appearing as extras. All the Chinese characters are being played by Mexicans, and vice versa. Today, director Miki Katsudon announced that actors above the age of 30 must perform in tennis gear; those under 30 are required to wear Groucho Marx glasses. Clearly Katsudon is losing his grip on reality--and we're only three days into filming!

"It always takes me a while to realize that the word Cyn, which appears on street signs, isn't short for Cynthia, but an abbreviation for canyon," Katsudon told Ought. Then he started imitating a hummingbird.

The weather is beautiful. Yesterday Jojo Katsudon, Miki's stepbrother and second unit director, shot some footage by the ocean. One of the cameramen stepped on a wet rock that turned out to be a frog. We stared at it for a long time until we knew for sure that it was OK.

Yesterday, craft services supplied hoagies, soup dumplings, and Mexican soft drinks, including our new favorite, Sideral Munden. It's an apple soda but it sounds like some grim Latin penance.

This morning, special effects coordinator Yuen Meboath perfected some tricky wirework, which will give the illusion that dozens of grilled pork sandwiches are levitating to the dulcet tones of the Chinese Community Choir's rendition of "In the Wee Small Hours." But Miki has decided that he no longer wants the sandwiches to contain grilled pork but rather barbecue pork, posing extreme logistical difficulties.

"Back to the old drawing board," said Yuen, through an interpreter. He estimates that Miki K.'s decision just added $50,000 to the budget. Will the film ever get made?

Ad-in

2005-01-17T20:13:00.001-05:00

Wouldn't it be fun to be a tennis pro? Well, maybe not--but the deep-voiced, extremely mellow-seeming fellow on the court next to us today mocked one of his young charge's sallies with "You're a SpongeBob SquareRacket"—causing said tyke to collapse with laughter.

Job board!

2005-01-14T08:36:00.000-05:00

We don't generally post employment opportunities here at Ought—non-Scrabble-related emp. opps, at least—but this one seemed like it might be of interest.

* * *

CASTING CALL: FRIDAY, JANUARY 14, 4 TO 6 PM

We are looking to cast the following roles for a short, funny,
web-based video (under two minutes long), which will be streamed on
the website of a well-known technology company. Performers must be
capable of humorously portraying individuals suffering from such
disorders as substance withdrawal, severe paranoia, and delusional
thinking. However, we would prefer if those auditioning are not
actually suffering from these disorders.

ROLES:
MALE TECH PROFESSIONAL, 30s, ANY RACE
MALE EXECUTIVE-TYPE, 40s-50s, ANY RACE
FEMALE EXECUTIVE-TYPE, 30s-40s, ANY RACE

If you're interested in auditioning, call Stain NYC at 212.989.0505 on
Friday between the hours of 10 AM and 2 PM to reserve an audition
slot. Walk-ins will not be accepted. All performers must bring
headshots and resumes or comp cards.

Poisson sans boisson—c'est poison

2005-01-13T22:50:00.000-05:00

"Tsukiji is not only the busiest fish market on our watery planet, but the hub of a world-wide Japanese-controlled collection system, always a source of pride to ambitious Orientals." —Murray Sayle, "Below the Nose," TLS Jan 7 05

Stone Reader

2005-01-10T07:57:00.000-05:00

Last night at the New York Film Critics' Circle awards dinner, aka Sideways Lovefest 2005, Sideways star Thomas Haden Church marveled at Sideways screenwriters Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor's ability to create fully formed human beings without having to go through "the typical nine-month gestation period." He had the same amusingly "stoned" demeanor that he had in the film (as Jack, friend to Paul Giamatti's Miles), which led us to wonder: has anyone remarked on the fact that his initials are "THC"?

Negativeland

2005-01-09T14:46:00.000-05:00

"In the 1950s, British philosopher J.L. Austin came to Columbia to present a paper about the close analysis of language. He pointed out that although two negatives make a positive, nowhere is it the case that two positives make a negative. 'Yeah, yeah,' Dr. Morgenbesser said." —The Globe and Mail, 9/04

Oughties want to know: Then what about the Pogues' "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah"?

Laugh (Not Laugh)

2005-01-06T23:05:00.000-05:00

The joke involving William Carlos Williams, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, and Ford Madox Ford (See "Help Finish This Joke," Ought Magazine, Dec. 17, 2004) now has a tantalizing soundtrack: the music of Was (Not Was)!

Our thanks to Mr. Rich Tamale, who mentioned that said combo will be playing live at B.B. King's "House of Blues," after a hiatus of some 358 years. Save us a seat, Rich!

POSTSCRIPT: Attentive Oughties will notice (as your humble editors have *just* noticed) that the name "B.B. King" also fits into the joke's basic format—a name in which two-thirds of the elements are identical!

Preteenage wasteland

2005-01-04T08:12:00.000-05:00

Today an obscure newspaper called *The New York Times* reports: "Over the years a bunch of names have been suggested [for the current decade], like the Oughts, the Naughts, the Naughties, the Zips, the Ohs, even the Preteens. Not one has taken root." (Clyde Haberman, "Queasy Feeling About a Decade With No Name")

Someone send this bloke a subscription to Ought Magazine!

Made, dame, mead

2005-01-02T11:53:00.001-05:00

We love the platycodon, but we also love the cheese. Carving our way through a hunk this weekend, we were reminded of yet another unfinished joke from the archives (c. 1997), which we will attempt to fill out a little here.

A notorious turophilic miser has a Yuletide change of heart and on Christmas Eve winds up tossing bags of high-grade fromage to his neighbors. Fondue pots bubble over and people learn the meaning of community. All the varieties in his stockroom are represented—save one.

When a small child confronts him with this omission, he replies with a smile, "I don't give Edam."

In more gripping news, we report on our opening sally from last night: JOINTED. That was good for 82 points right out of the gate, a lead we held onto for the rest of the match.

[Cue: Aerosmith, "Back in the Saddle"]

Happy 5002!

2005-01-01T19:08:00.000-05:00

On the subway this afternoon, we spotted a woman wearing those "2005" spectacles, the ones where your peepers look through the zeros. True fact: Ought magazine gets its name from this decade—the zero-zeros, aka the aughts or naughts or oughts. (Also, the title suggests that you *ought* to be reading this most ornate and blindsiding of publications.)

And with the mental alacrity so often put to use as we hover over *la field de scrabble*, we perceived that the digits 2-0-0-5 read *exactly the same upside down*. How apropos, for a year that's already started out topsy-turvy. We were so besotted by this quasi-palindromic numerical discovery that it wasn't until hours later that we realized, after writing down the numbers in a stick-like "LCD" fashion, that if you turned those feliz nuevo año specs upside down you would get . . . 5002.

So save those glasses for a few centuries, Oughties, and when your cryogenically preserved bodies start up again a couple millennia down the road, you won't have to shell out the extra bucks (or sol-units, as they'll be called then) for a fresh pair of celebratory goggles.

Let the toast pass

2004-12-31T23:57:00.000-05:00

New York City . . . Scary teens are chanting in the street . . . police copters thicken the night sky . . . a million people crowd Times Square whilst wearing orange jester caps that say "Discover" . . . OK . . . discover what? . . . We have placed a dry-cleaning bag around the air conditioner, secured at the top using a hockey puck, so the cold air can't sneak in . . . only there's no cold air because it's 52 degrees . . . more chanting . . .

We turn to Richard Brinsley Sheridan for a toast to take us out of 2004—the sooner the better, we think:

The chorus runs:

Let the toast pass,--
Drink to the lass,
I'll warrant she'll prove an excuse for the glass.

We warrant she will too, RBS. We warrant she will too. (Thanks to Brit Grits of the Inflatable Fun Guys for sending the link our way; the IFG, for those not in the know, set these lines to music way back in '87.)

We're dejected to the point of madness by the news of the tsunami. It seems hardly possible to celebrate. As Ennis Mild, our Cape Cod correspondent, dourly muses: "TSUNAMI is anagram to I AM NUTS.

Here's to a happier new year, Oughties.

Last meditation from the Isthmus of Kra

2004-12-29T10:00:00.000-05:00

Give me silence, water, hope.
—Neruda

Running AFOUL

2004-12-27T01:19:00.000-05:00

Just back from holiday. Per Ought tradition, we spent Christmas snacking on elaborate donburis, gingerbread chai, and honey-glazed platycodon. Gifts were exchanged, and songs were sung, and debates were sparked by such seemingly innocuous comments like, "There has never been an Asian male on REAL WORLD ROAD RULES."

Sonora Loganberry baked her superlative Yuletide cookies, and the local fire warden came by and distributed clear plastic therapeutic bath mats, the tops of which bore innumerable grasslike feelers. We're a little wary of affixing ours to the tub. It may take root and never leave.

Not much interesting in the way of Scrabble, save that we played AFOUL twice, in consecutive turns—intersecting each other, no less! Still, Sonora defeated every opponent handily. Including us.

We need to go to the dentist.

Breaking news—and a holiday joke

2004-12-24T11:41:00.000-05:00

Just in time for Christmas, Ought Magazine's team of overpaid stringers dig up this hard-hitting exposé, courtesy of the Buffalo News: "Grandmas have earned right to relax, enjoy day":

http://buffalonews.com/editorial/20041224/1044806.asp

[An excerpt:

"Over the river and through the woods . . ." Hold it! Stop the music!

Happily or unhappily, this song has become an anachronism. More than likely, Grandma lives today in a condo in Florida, Arizona or the Carolinas. Or, like me, in a two-bedroom apartment with a kitchen the size of a pool table. Williamsville is still home for me, where I am near my church, the Senior Center and Wegmans.

Hosting my entire family of 16 for a holiday? Bad idea. Instead of beds, I'd have to stack them like firewood. And I have only one bathroom. I don't think so.

So, after 30 years of wrestling 20-pound turkeys into the oven and making Yorkshire pudding for the roast beef at the last minute, I am revolting. That is, as in "revolution." ]

* * *

In other news, Ought offers you a holiday joke, which should fit nicely into a family-gathered-by-the-tree gift-opening scenario. A surly teen cinephile has just unwrapped a box containing three pairs of underwear, which leads to utter befuddlement. His sister whispers to their parents:

"He wanted DVDs—not *B*VDs!"

Abecedarian amendments

2004-12-22T23:56:00.000-05:00

We were being screamed at by one of our officemates today—an increasingly popular phenomenon, as everyone starts to go end-of-the-year bonkers—and felt so dejected afterward that we immediately e-mailed various pals about the incident.

One of our friends—the glamorous Moss Jervins—called us up immediately and we chatted for a while, which was nice. She managed to put the spring back in our step with this little reminiscence:

"I used to go to this summer camp, and one day we went on a field trip to Boston. We were standing in front of some place awful—say, the Cheers bar—and we dared Vela Roppongi to go up to the doorman and utter the pickup line, 'I'm thinking of rewriting the alphabet to bring U and I closer together.'

"Now Vela was not the biggest brain of the bunch, and when the time came, she said to this poor Cheers doorman, in her most seductive voice, 'I'm rewriting the alphabet and I want to bring U and me closer together.'

"We were devastated when he didn't really respond the way we thought he would, with copious shows of affection, or at least some souvenir from inside. Instead he just sort of looked at her with a permanent *huh?* on his face. In retrospect he was probably 20 and annoyed and could tell that we were, um, 13."

And your bird can sing

2004-12-22T01:07:00.000-05:00

A news clipping from the Globe and Mail, sometime this summer:

Problem Birds
The latest craze in the markets of Hyderabad, India, is the Problem Bird, reports the Independent on Sunday. "To the casual onlooker, these are black drongos, rather plain crow-like birds; but to the local [customers] they are magic. Buy one, whisper your problem in its ear, release it, and, as it flies away, so will your difficulty. The birds are less lucky. Their wings are clipped, so the traders soon round them up and put them on sale again."

This is pure metaphor and makes us happy that such things exist, sad that problems never escape. We'll be playing BIRD off the B in PROBLEM next chance we get.

We also like the word *drongos*.

(Advertisement)

2004-12-21T23:32:00.000-05:00

“He began to study the trains. The first northwards was the 4 pm dining express from King’s Cross to Newcastle. It left Doncaster at 7.56 and reached Selby at 8.21. Would Archer travel by it? And if he did, what would be his next move?”
—Freeman Wills Croft, THE PIT PROP SYNDICATE

For a biography of Freeman Wills Croft, master of the "timetable mystery" novel (THE PIT PROP SYNDICATE, THE 12.30 FROM CROYDON, et al.), the undersigned would appreciate hearing from anyone in possession of train tickets, schedules, or other forms of railway documentation used by Croft, either in the composition of his tales or simply in his everyday life.

Please write to:
Jaroslav Tonsils
P.O. Box 52326
Yale Station
New Haven, CT 06520

Word up

2004-12-21T07:38:00.000-05:00

According to Merriam-Webster (http://www.merriam-webster.com/info/04words.htm), the top 10 words of the year, based on online searches, are:

1. blog
2. incumbent
3. electoral
4. insurgent
5. hurricane
6. cicada
7. peloton
8. partisan
9. sovereignty
10. defenestration

Coincidentally, not long ago we worked a PELOTON off PARTISAN, and CICADA always gives us a delicious shiver when we play it or see it played.

DEFENESTRATION is, for some peculiar reason, the holy grail of Scrabble words. It's 14 letters long, and nearly impossible to play, though we came tantalizingly close two summers ago at the Cap d'Antibes invitational. Our opponent had laid RATION on the board; we had DEFENSE in our rack, a perfect bingo in itself. But there was no way to maneuver our letters into position, as DEFENES isn't a word, last we checked, and there would still be the matter of that missing T. Not quite thinking straight, we forfeited a turn, as if somehow a T would fall into place out of the clear blue sky. Coming to our senses next turn, we deployed DEFENSE in a relatively unpopulated sector of the board.

Our opportunity had gone out the window. But at least we could bring back this story for you.

The Ought review: Inflatable Fun Guys

2004-12-21T01:00:00.000-05:00

"I see your twenty
And raise you twenty.
And oh, did I mention?
I smell the firecrackers from last Tuesday . . . "

Sound familiar, music fans?

Last night we went to see the Inflatable Fun Guys perform the last show of their six-night Bangkok stand. The IFG were never big in America (from whence they hail), but their Asian following has always been healthy, save for a few iffy weeks back in 1993 when lead singer Ovo Grits was jailed for excessive smiling. (Officials suspected a chemical addiction, when in fact he was just very happy.) Anyone who's heard GOLF BALL FROM A STRANGER (1988), PARADOX LUNCH REVISITED (1991), or even the poorly recorded live album ALOHA FROM GREENWICH, ENGLAND (1995) knows that the 'Guys sound like no one else around. And what's more, if given the chance to do it all over again, they wouldn't change a single note.

We here at Ought cut our teeth on Inflatable Fun Guys bootlegs, and spent much of our Scrabble earnings in those early years—when we could least afford to!—following them on tour. Alaska ’91 was pretty much the limit (bad weather, polar bears, vengeful indigenous deities), and we vowed to taper off our IFG intake. When they disbanded in ’99, after too many defections and spats to count, we breathed a sigh of relief—but deep down we knew we would never quite get over them.

Which made last night's comeback particularly bittersweet. We had changed, yet stayed the same—and so had the Inflatable Fun Guys. Ovo Grits, now fantastically obese and inclined to speaking in tongues, pretty much restricted himself to the occasional handclap and periodically distributing Jehovah's Witness materials to those in the front rows. Brit Grits, his twin brother, took over lead vocal and lead guitar duties, which sometimes seemed more than he could handle. Fortunately, drummer Mezzo Grits (no relation) did a fine job maintaining the beat, armed as he was with an enormous oak-lined metronome, to which he set fire at the evening's climax. Which was—naturellement—their trademark closer, "Cellophane Corollary/I Smell the Firecrackers From Last Tuesday," a 17-minute soundscape that had the audience at Bangkok Rotarians Hall 409 swaying happily as their earplugs turned to an intractable putty. When the smoke cleared, Mezzo announced that the band planned to record again soon, and that a North American tour was planned for the new year.

Good luck, 'Guys. We've missed you. We will always miss you. Keep doing what you're doing and you'll never go wrong.

Punchline found?

2004-12-20T17:36:00.000-05:00

A reader from Capetown suggests a possible resolution for the joke sketched out below (in which William Carlos Williams, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, and Ford Madox Ford walk into a bar).

To wit: "Isn't that e.e. cummings?"

Now we just need someone to provide the connective tissue stretching from setup to punchline. Ready, set, JOKE!

PLATY___ON

2004-12-18T23:02:00.000-05:00

Scrabblers: Try playing PLATYCODON as a bingo, off a preexisting COD. You'll need the tiles P, L, A, T, Y, O, and N (feel free to substitute one or two of the letters with the appropriate number of blank tiles). The first player to submit a photograph of a board bearing this word, with a notarized scoresheet bearing the signatures of both players along with brief testimonials as to the veracity of PLATYCODON played in such a manner as to empty a rack, will receive a month's supply of the coveted foodstuff in question.

Platy-who-don?

2004-12-18T22:14:00.000-05:00

Of all the burning questions of the day, the most burningest might be: Have you eaten your platycodon yet?

No—not your placenta. And not your codeine.

Platycodon is a whitish root. Soak overnight and cook the next day as you would any other vegetable. Our sources tell us that it is more commonly known as the balloon flower, so named to describe its buds.

We don't know that it's something you need to eat with every meal. But we do know that you need to eat some right *now*.

We are soaking some at the moment and cannot wait to give it a good chew. Won't you join us?

UPDATE: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: OUGHT MAGAZINE AND PLATYCODON TODAY ANNOUNCE FIRST ANNUAL PLATYCODON FEST, TO BE HELD IN VILLAGE 9 (88-B/21), EASTERN SIBERIA, ON AUGUST 2, 2005. CELEBRITY CHEFS TO BE ANNOUNCED. THIS WILL BE ONE OF THE MOST SIGNIFICANT NEW FOOD EVENTS OF NEXT YEAR.

Hello Monkey Laundromat: 2029

2004-12-17T23:54:00.000-05:00

Cinephiles, rejoice: The sequel to HELLO MONKEY LAUNDROMAT (see the Ought review, below) has will begin shooting next month in, of all places, Irvine, California . . . and Ought Magazine will be on location! Watch for daily posts, filled with behind-the-scenes gossip, fascinating interviews, and fun-filled trivia.

The film's working title is HELLO MONKEY LAUNDROMAT: 2029, and from a sneak peek at the script, we can tell you that it's every bit as riveting as its predecessor—with all the austere sound effects, moral labyrinths, and long shots of dripping water you'd expect from the creators of HML. DP "Dusty" Wainscotting returns as the limpid lensmen; Aussie hottie Halo Blankman joins the cast, fresh off a very successful Pacific Rim tour.

We hope you're as excited as we are!

Help finish this joke!

2004-12-17T16:21:00.000-05:00

We first glimpsed the outlines of this joke at least 12 years ago, thanks to our friend D.M.S. Shrapnel, and thought of it again this morning during a long commute upon the Elevated. Why can't we finish it? Why is it over as soon as it begins to be uttered?

"William Carlos Williams, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, and Ford Madox Ford walk into a bar."

The scenario positively seethes with possibility. Ought readers are invited to flesh out this bit of humor, but are hereby forewarned: It's not as easy as you think!

That joke isn't funny anymore

2004-12-16T23:25:00.000-05:00

Back in 2000 we tried to compose a joke based on the word AMNESIA and the town Ames, Iowa—from which we must have recently received a bill or subscription offer or other direct-mail jazz, for we were clearly obsessed with the postal abbreviation: AMES, IA.

All the letters of AMNESIA are in AMES, IA save for the N.

We addressed 4,000+ "Scrabble youth" at the November 2000 Midwest All-Invitational Juvenile Scrabble Qualifiers Competition (a/k/a "The Scrabb-a-lot"), and thought we'd begin with something witty. We had pressed our AMNESIA/AMES, IA fixation into a riddle of sorts, which came out like this:

"Hey Junior Scrabbers! What letter do you forget in Ames, Iowa?"

The answer we were hoping for was: "N!"

Dear Ought reader: Have you ever heard the silence of 4,000 Scrabble youth? Have you then heard that silence turn into what can only be described as a "booing" sound? At first you think it's "moo," but no.

It's actually "boo."

The Ought review: Hello Monkey Laundromat

2004-12-16T22:46:00.000-05:00

It's Christmastime again. The beach is closed; sad-looking lights hang like forgotten jewelry from the pier, and the lap of the waves sounds like that bereted drunk in the corner of the coffee shop who's been applauding more or less constantly since 1978. Hammerheads and manta rays, lured by wonky magnetic fields as the solstice nears and passes, fling themselves onto the drab gray sand. It starts to look like a crime scene. Who *wouldn't* get discouraged? The only thing for it is to play a game or two of Scrabble with the one you love—or else go to the movies.

Critics are agog over cryptic fare such as SIDEWAYS and THE INCREDIBLES, while ignoring such sure-to-be classics as HELLO MONKEY LAUNDROMAT, shot entirely on location (mostly on digital video) in a bulk laundry facility in Hokkaido. Our Japanese friends don't even like this movie—but then again, they'd rather be watching reruns of QUASAR JOE, that game show in which contestants must humiliate, via robot, various blood relations, cocktail waitresses, and wrestling mascots.

A friend slipped us a screener for HELLO MONKEY LAUNDROMAT yesterday, and once we started watching, we couldn't stop. Initially this was because the VCR remote's batteries are shot, and the television set is such a long ways away. The film's four-hour running time is positively glacial, but a lot happens in that interval. You begin to understand many things: the changing nature of the light as it brushes the mighty Pacific; the flavor of wild grains no longer harvested; what sort of sandwich you might enjoy after the movie finishes and the lovely usherette asks if you wouldn't mind accompanying her to dinner with her father, the oil tycoon, and by the way I'm an heiress. To say that not much happens in HELLO MONKEY LAUNDROMAT is like saying that not much happens when you put a two-week-old load of undershirts and argyles into the washer and give it a spin. You derive from the machine exactly what you've put in—only cleaner, brighter, refreshed, invigorating. It's like going to a spa and asking them to cover your body with pages from ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE as the room goes humid. It's like brushing your teeth with Alberto VO5 while a joint Johns Hopkins–Taiwan National University team of surgeons transfers all the toes from your left foot to your right and vice versa, in a procedure televised via satellite to 31 nations.

Yes, folks.

It's *that* good.

Get outta Dodge

2004-12-14T22:14:00.000-05:00

Just back from a night at the theatah—watching the new play by Lionel Tubbs, who beat us in the third round qualifiers at Waukegan back in 1987. Lionel's come a long way since then—quitting "da grid," cashing in his tiles, and sharpening up his tools of the trade: playwright's pencils.

He's gotten a ton of guff for his searing look at relationships, particularly those between man and pet. In his latest, "Three Sexy Station Wagons" (based on an article in the January 2005 MONEY magazine—Tubbs works fast, boy!), he looks at one yuppie's relationship to three different cars. (The title is something of a misnomer: Though the protagonist, Grover Hotspot, owns a Volvo V50 T5 and leases the Dodge Magnum RT AWD, the third "station wagon" is actually an SUV, a Rav4 with muffler issues that he's inherited from his uncle.) Tubbs is one of the few artists working today who endeavor, in work after work, to lead us far from our cozy comfort zones—amen to that.

Grover has given up women, wine—and, yes, pets—in order to better contemplate the virtues and drawbacks of his three "sexy" vehicles. It's a bumpy ride. (Hint: All the stuff Freud wrote about King Lear is applicable here.) Our favorite line of dialogue:

GROVER: Tell me that snow chains are a good idea. F---in' *say* it!
VOLVO V50 T5: [beeps]
GROVER: [Sobbing] Why can't you just say it in plain English?

We don't want to give *too* much away—the play runs for the rest of the month at the Mazda6 (formerly Kiwanis Club) Theater, which has undergone extensive renovation. Suffice it to say: Tubbs is on a roll. Pun very much intended.

Electrical cords

2004-12-14T17:22:00.000-05:00

We love combing the listings of obscure publications, on the lookout for unusual stores and eccentric restaurants. It's a great way to discover the secret life of any city.

A friend in New York sends us this oddball write-up (found in the back pages of GOTHAM GOLF, a publication of the Upper East Side Falun Gong Association). Anyone want to pay a visit and report back?

ELECTRONIC JEANS
High-tech fans and denim aficionados alike will find something to savor at Electronic Jeans, the latest addition to the fashionable stretch of Bowery from Bond to Bleecker. Check out the "digital" bell bottoms and binary-code corduroys.
C $$ 5 66 N/A

Next word: HADEN CHURCH

2004-12-14T04:22:00.000-05:00

Some wrong answers to our cinema challenge (find five words in GIAMATTI):

MATIG (for "mating"); MIGIT (for "midget"); MAGIT (for "magic"); MAGIA (for "magic"); GAMI (for "game"); IMAGAT (for "imagine"); AGIM (for "aging")

TATAMI was our most popular/successful word, using 75% of the letters.

Don't shoot the pinot player

2004-12-14T01:48:00.000-05:00

We love the cinema, don't you?

Here is today's challenge, in honor of the film SIDEWAYS: Come up with at least five words (of three or more letters) derived from the name GIAMATTI.

Good luck!

New York, New York

2004-12-12T23:33:00.000-05:00

Some of our readers want to know more about us, our murky origins and uncertain future. What can we say that hasn't already been covered in the trade magazines?

Pattaya Beach was no picnic. We couldn't afford Scrabble sets. We would steal them from American tourists, or (more often) construct our own boards in the sand. Dragging a specially calibrated rake across the grains in two opposing sections gave us an instant grid. The time-consuming part was indicating the special-score squares. Purloined tourist nail polish, sunscreen, and other sheen-giving concoctions were used to mark these spaces. It took at least a half an hour, sometimes more, to create the illusion of a playable board, and we labored in the sun like monks over a mandala. For tiles we cut out capital letters from the headlines in the International Herald-Tribune and glued them to the flattest stones we could find.

All this to play the game we loved.

Now we are in New York, and a regulation set is not so difficult to obtain. The magic is gone, perhaps?

Except that last week we saw Yoko Ono on the street. And today we saw Chloe Sevigny. The novelty of such "sightings" was nice. But our main thought, the one that makes us think we "still had it in us," was: Both of these ladies have such Scrabble-ready names—if only we could play them!

Those spaced-out o's!

Those glorious consonantal pileups!

Tile gloves

2004-12-12T23:14:00.000-05:00

It occurs to us: Do our readers—some of whom are less than fluent in the terminology and technology of the "Great Game" (better: "mega-game")—know what "tile gloves" are? They're essentially golf gloves, with any golflike logo or brand name assiduously removed or obscured.

On a practical level, tile gloves absorb the sweat that comes with even mid-level tourney play. Alternately, in underheated venues, they keep your hands warm, preventing cramps—any minor physical shortcoming can distract a player, though we know of one regular 500+ scorer who claims an incessant headache during an October '03 Toledo match inspired him to play "ibuprofen" off a preexisting "of," clearing his rack and winning the game.

So anyway: tile gloves. They're also required by most tournament officials, to crack down on what's known as "fingering"—the Braille-ish temptation, albeit unconscious, to palpate the incisions on the bag tiles and thereby select letters helpful to your cause.

Hokay.

Let's just say this last election has made some of us put on our tile gloves.

Lively lads with the pencil

2004-12-12T22:30:00.000-05:00

These were found in an old journal of ours, which we would use to let the mind unwind after (or during) a particularly intense Scrabble tournament. Playing against competitors from over two dozen nations, we made many friends, and periodically they would send us new quotes for our collection. Any of these might serve as a motto for this magazine.

"I have my own private dictionary."
—Montaigne

"She felt in italics, and thought in italics."
—Henry James, The American

"And what sort of lively lads with the pencil the Chinese are, many queer cups and saucers inform us."
—Herman Melville, Moby Dick

"In 1761 Johnson appears to have done little."
—Boswell's Life of Johnson

"Half the world has never received a phone call."
—Kofi Annan

"I used to have shadings. Now I'm all one thing."
—Don DeLillo, Great Jones Street

"Does anybody go away voluntarily? Has anybody ever realized his own worthlessness?"
—P.D. Ouspensky, A New Model of the Universe

"She was shivering so hard/It looked like there were two of her."
—Silver Jews, Pet Politics

"He learned the alphabet of the lightning."
—Pablo Neruda, "Education of the Chieftain"

"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
—Emerson