During one of the boring, unintentionally comical conference calls I had to attend last week, as we discussed marketing efforts, a colleague busted out with, “It’s like ‘sell the hole, not the nail.’”

I could hear the blank stares buzzing through my phone line.

“You know it’s one of those sayings. Like, ‘you don’t sell the sizzle, you sell the steak,’” she explained.

In a way, “sell the hole, not the nail” is like “you don’t sell the sizzle, you sell the steak.” In that they both don’t make any sense.

But the real saying, as folks pointed out, was: . . .

Continue Reading »

At Christmas this year, my ten year-old nephew (the one who inspired Kris’s silliness below, and left) told us this joke, and then explained to us what made it funny– he pointed out that it’s usually funnier when you have to figure out what the punch line means, instead of having it explained to you. So we’ve been thinking about how to ruin jokes, and thought it might make for a fun 12apostrophes game.

Here’s an example:

A horse walks into a bar, and the bartender asks, “why are you so sad?”

(See, the REAL line is, the bartender asks, . . .

Continue Reading »

As comments to Kris’s excellent post on Williams Carlos Williams’s psych-out apology, a couple of people mentioned discussions of the literary cafe.

When Kris and I were in college, our friend Jatt Mohnson (that’s not his real name, so don’t try and google him) and some other folk came up with the idea of the literary cafe. Another friend Shlevi Shwilliams was back then an aspring chef, and we thought we should open a restaurant, where, get this, all the names would be literary references! The recent comments on this blog mentioned, for instance, “Williams . . .

Continue Reading »

Think all the way back to college. Do you remember William Carlos Williams “note-I-left-on-the-refrigerator” poem?

This Is Just To Say
by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast.

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold.

Pulao and I listened to a podcast of This American Life from three weeks ago, an episode called “Mistakes Were Made.” In it, among other things, are a few riffs on . . .

Continue Reading »

The fifth installment of the Triple Rock Social Club’s Pub Trivia Night is tonight at 8 p.m. If you weren’t planning on going, I would instead. Triple Rock Trivia has proved to be some serious fun.

At the end of this post is a pop vocabulary quiz. But first, a little history of Triple Rock Trivia Nights so far:

The first time out, the winners were “The Winners” — a team who, full of optimism, named themselves that, then spent all the goodwill they may have garnered with their winsome name by actually winning.

When “The Winners” kept their name, . . .

Continue Reading »