Syndication beats sequel.

Back in April, I reported on the sheep-like repetition of the epithet "indie darling" whenever Greta Gerwig was mentioned in a review of the dreadful Arthur remake. I think I got 20,000 Google hits on the phrase. (It's now up to 114,000, although oddly you get even more if you mistype "darling.")

Well, it's happening again. The lovely Zooey Deschanel is in a new TV series in the fall line-up, and she seems to have taken over the label in a big way. Current score for "indie darling Zooey Deschanel": 986,000 hits.

Conclusion: Television reviewers have even less imagination than movie reviewers. But then somehow you expected that, huh?

Mind you, the phrase "Zooey Deschanel and Katy Perry" scores over three million Google hits, which probably all link to posts that speculate whether they're the same person. Well, you can see why from the picture. (Zooey's on the left. Or is she . . ?)

So if there's ever a remake of the Bette Davis classic A Stolen Life, in which she played twin sisters*, think of the money you could save on the special effects by simply casting Z and K.

(Although one of the sisters in the movie was named Kate Bosworth, so perhaps that role should go to the actress, uh, Kate Bosworth. On the other hand, here's a picture of Kate and Zooey together. Not so much of a resemblance.)

*Bette Davis also played twin sisters in Dead Ringers, which was directed by Paul Heinreid, who starred with Davis in Now, Voyager, which gave us that supposedly sexy business of lighting two cigarettes at once and the classic line "Oh Jerry, don't let's ask for the moon. We have the stars." The film also starred (by-then) veteran actress Gladys Cooper, whose grandson, Sheridan Morley (son of Robert) was the official yet posthumous biographer of Sir John Gielgud, who starred in the original Arthur, in which the title character was played by Dudley Moore, and not Russell Brand, Katy Perry's husband, who was in the remake with indie darling Greta Gerwig. I could keep this up all night, you know. Sad, isn't it?

A small wonder.

This afternoon, I managed to travel the length of the Cross-Bronx Expressway, home to three out of the top four worst intersections in the U.S., without letting my speed drop below the posted limit.

So how come when I pick up a Wii remote and race Secundus, I can't go ten yards without hitting a barrier or attempting to drive up the stairs to a pedestrian overpass? More to the point, how come the kids don't have the same problems?

I go fourth.

If the third time's a charm, what's the fourth? Linen? Fruit?

(If it's a fourth wedding anniversary*, it's appliances, according to the modern U.S. so-called "tradition." No doubt the same consumerist folk tradition that gave us the ceremony of dancing round the Maytag, ha, ha ha.)

Anyway, I'm honored to have been asked for the fourth time to do some workshops at the annual Young Authors Conference for the best creative writers in Westchester County's high schools, also known as the best gig in the Universe.

Nice to know I'm doing something right.


*If it's a fourth wedding, it's called have-we-learned-nothing.

I nearly stepped into a poodle.

It's taken DNA testing, the expert comments of several vets, four years of observable behavior, and enough dog-fanciers' two-cents-worths to pay for her next Nylabone, but we'd pretty well concluded that Leila, the pedigree-deprived rescue dog, is largely akita inu, the Japanese imperial breed. The pink nose is a good sign.

But today, I'm loyally but grumpily walking said beast in the pouring rain, when I have to intervene to stop her eating a dead frog.

A bit of shock, then, for this Englishman to realize his pooch could be part French.

Who Gnu?

An idle observation at 10:30 p.m., after driving for nearly twelve hours straight, hypnotized by headlights and hopped up on several cups of coffee and a large Red Bull . . .

If you're heading north on the Henry Hudson Parkway in Manhattan, just as it passes Riverbank State Park in Harlem, and you maintain a speed of about 65 m.p.h., the seams in the pavement make your front and back axles thump in the rhythm of the piano introduction to Michael Flanders and Donald Swann's song The Gnu.

Happy returns.

Me, by Tertius

It was my birthday on Monday -- thanks to anyone who sent me a greeting on Facebook. I spent a very contented afternoon with the boys, starting out by teaching them how to play Poohsticks, first on a bridge over the Blind Brook on Rye's too-busy Highland Avenue, and then further downstream in the relative safety of our glorious Nature Center. After the first game, they beat me solidly. Which is the way it should be.

Good to watch the guys thoroughly happy together for hours, basically messing about in a cool, shallow river with pieces of rope, sticks, wooden boats, soggy sandals, leaves . . .   Not a screen in sight.

Later, I'm talking to Tertius, who listens to me and comments placidly, "If I had a quarter for every word you['ve] said, I don't know what I could do with that much money."

ON again, ON again.

I'm in San Francisco, with only my iTouch to access the internet. So this can only be a brief message to say "Happy one-hundred and ninth birthday, Ogden Nash!"

What have we learned?

That it's not enough to remove the old, dried-up grounds from the coffee-maker. You also have to add fresh coffee before you run it.

Convent-ional Wisdom?

Nice slip of the tongue this evening by an NPR presenter, introducing a forum on the economy, when he nearly said the "International Monastery Fund."

Looking for puns linking monks and economics. Got nothing. (Could have gone with Lehman Brothers, but they went bankrupt in 2008.)

Kill me dead.

Trying to watch a "Transformers" movie, but it's hard to keep track of who's the good robot versus who's the bad when most of the action looks like an Erector Set in a washing machine.

But it seems that half the time, you can't keep a good Decepticon down. Megatron takes a licking but keeps on ticking through two sequels, while other robots are smashed forever with one blast.

"What decides whether a transformer is beyond recovery?" I ask Primus.

"You have to destroy it hard enough," he explains.