Thursday, October 10, 2013

Quod Unusquisque Nosse


I know a lot of stuff.  Heck, I’ve been collecting this knowledge for an embarrassing number of years.  Much of the stuff I know was collected at the trough of the American educational system during a seventeen year dance that concluded with a bachelor’s degree from a fully accredited public university.  I have to admit, it took me twenty-one years because I am easily led astray by shiny things.  But in the ensuing years, I picked up a material amount of intellectual flotsam and jetsam disregarded in the halls of academia. If you are a regular reader of these missives, you have more than likely been exposed to a few of these gems, especially if you are ambitious enough to tackle my offerings with a dictionary by your side.
In this week’s posting I am going to offer you some tidbits of trivial knowledge that will hold you in good stead among drunks and most probably labeled a bore by the tea-totaling set.  This exercise to boost your worth as a cocktail party guest will require some minimal amount of effort on your part.  I am going to offer you several pieces of knowledge you should already own but probably don’t, or if you ever did, have lost along the way.  I will pose questions, give you some relevant information to show how world wise I am, but not present the answers.  However, you need not do any research.  In the last section of this thesis, I will present the answers to you.  Are you ready?  I am interested if anyone else knows all of these answers off the tops of their heads.  Let me know. 

Quod Unusquisque Nosse 

What are the names of the seven dwarfs? We all know the fairy tale “Snow White”. It was published by the Brothers Grim in 1812, with their final version completed in 1854. You know about the magic mirror, the poison apple and the glass coffin. But interestingly enough, the dwarfs were not named in the original work. They were first given individual names in the Broadway play Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1912).  But the names that have become iconic were invented for the 1937 Walt Disney film bearing the same title. Their names as given in the play of 1912 are: Blick, Flick, Glick, Plick, Quee, Snick and Whick.
Who are the Three Musketeers?  This is the best work of fiction I have read!  And that statement encompasses some of my own arrest reports.  Now considering my disdain for French literature (you know what I’m talking about if you’ve ever struggled through anything by Victor Hugo) this is quite the endorsement.  It is chock full of adventure, suspense, intrigue, romance and humor… and humor.  The story was first published by author Alexandre Dumas as a serial offering in 1844.  We owe credit to Dumas for the trademark line, “One for all, all for one!” The novel’s setting is the 16th century court of Louis XIII.  Several movie versions have been produced, but due to the length of the novel, the most faithful treatment was by director Richard Lester with two movies; The Three Musketeers (1973) and The Four Musketeers (1974), distributed by 20th Century Fox.  Your challenge; name the title characters.
Can you name Santa’s eight tiny reindeer? Yeah, yeah! We all know Rudolph, but he didn’t make the scene until 1939 in a booklet written by Robert L. May.  But the plank holders of Santa’s flight crew were first identified in the 1823 anonymous poem A Visit from St. Nicholas. (Yes, yes Virginia, the poem is also know by the titles: The Night Before Christmas and ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas in popular usage, but I have never been particularly popular myself, so please hold to proper form and use the correct title in public conversation.) Eventually the authorship was attributed to Clement Clarke Moore but as with most things literary there is a controversy that assigns it to Henry Livingston, Jr.  As a man who has spent his life avoiding controversy, I will consistently do so here stating I have no opinion.  Far more important than assigning credit is acknowledging that this poem is responsible for creating the first uniform image of the American Santa Claus.  Knowing the order in which the reindeer are named will earn you extra credit.
Name the funniest men in the history of film.  No, Will Ferrel did not make the list!  I am of course referring to the Marx Brothers.  If you are not familiar with their work, you have been sorely deprived of low humor in its highest form. What became known as the Marx Brothers was a family on-stage music and comedy act from New York making their debut in 1905.  Their act transformed from more music to more comedy as they found their vaudeville and Broadway niche.  The film legacy was introduced in the 1929 Paramount Pictures film The Cocoanuts (my all-time favorite).  The films were a collection of skits and gags from their stage act sewn together with an often nonsensical plot. Five of the Marx Bros. thirteen feature films were listed among the American Film Institute's (AFI) top 100 comedies of the Twentieth Century, two (Duck Soup and A Night at the Opera) among the top twelve.  The brothers also made the list of AFI’s 100 most significant screen legends, the only group act to be included.  If you are new to the Marx Brothers, you will find as may iconic lines as you will in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.  I’ll give you a hint, there are more than three.

And Now… the Answers

 
The Seven Dwarfs: Doc, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Bashful, Sneezy and Dopey
 
The Three Musketeers: Athos, Porthos and Aramis.  If you included d’Artagnan, you weren’t paying attention to the assignment.

The Eight Tiny Reindeer:

“Now! Dasher, now! Dancer, now! Prancer and Vixen, 
  “On! Comet, on! Cupid, on! Donder and Blitzen;…” (sic)

The Marx Brothers: Chico, Harpo, Groucho, Gummo and Zeppo.  Zeppo appeared in only the first five films in relatively minor, straight (meaning non-humorous, not non-gay… not that there is anything wrong with that) roles.  Gummo did not appear as an on screen personality.
“Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”

-- Groucho Marx



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