Oh, look -- a new link!

Just added to the blogroll: She Blogged by Night, by Stacia Jones, who, like the Self-Styled Siren, writes perceptively -- and charmingly -- about classic movies.

Most recently, Ms. Jones has written about "Johnny Guitar" (which I've never seen all the way through) and "Rope" (which I just bought on DVD).

I'm about to mosey over and see what she thinks of them. I hope you'll feel free to join me.

Another one of life's little ironies....

A little while ago my brother Michael was trying to remember the name of an Arnold Schwarzenegger film that he has seen many times.

Try as he might, he couldn't come up with the name, though he could remember a couple of other things about the movie.

After some Internet sleuthing, I had the answer.

"Total Recall."

The man who taught dirty plays

It was a beautiful spring day, so our class, which met at 2:30 p.m., was supposed to be held outside, in a plaza outside the academic building.

There was just one problem.

It was now 2:40, and our professor, who also ran the English department, hadn’t shown up.

Which was unusual, because he was always on time.

Not only that, but there was a rule – though I don’t think I ever saw it written down – that said that if a professor didn’t show up on time, the students were free to leave after the 10-minute-late point unless the professor, like ours, had a doctorate. Then we had to wait an additional five minutes.

I think our professor made it with about two minutes to spare.

“Sorry to be late,” he said, “but George Hampden accidentally set his wastebasket on fire and I was helping him put it out.”

And we all laughed because we knew this was the kind of thing that could happen to Dr. Hampden (whose name I have changed here), back in the days when it was not unusual for professors to smoke in their offices.

And this wasn’t the first time that we or any other students laughed at something that happened to Dr. Hampden – or even laughed at the mention of his name.

The story on campus was that Dr. Hampden didn’t have to teach, that he was a Boston Brahmin, a man of independent means. He was also a bachelor and lived across the street from the college in one of many apartment buildings in a complex that was beginning to go to seed.

I suppose you could say that Dr. Hampden was beloved by his students, but not in the same way that Mr. Chips was. The accounting students loved him and always picked his classes for their required English courses because he was an easy A.

And he often cut his own classes.

Each semester, after the first couple of weeks, the “cut board” outside the registrar’s office would bear a sign reading “Dr. Hampden will not meet with his classes today.” Within the next few weeks this sign would reappear more frequently.

Finally, and perhaps at a point in the semester when he felt he wanted to avoid the wrath of the academic dean (whose office was just down the hall from the registrar’s office), Dr. Hampden would sneak across the street to the college, find his classroom, pick up a piece of chalk and write, well, you guessed it.

When I was a junior I took two classes from him. I don’t remember any of his lectures, but I do remember that he would always start the semester with a prayer and that when he made the sign of the cross he’d say “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” which seemed quaint and old-fashioned at a time when Catholics almost universally had begun to refer to that third entity as the Holy Spirit.

The first course was about the age of Samuel Johnson. At one point, all the students had to do a presentation on some aspect of Johnson’s life and era. Dr. Hampden assigned the topics, and though I now couldn’t remember my topic if my life depended on it, I do recall that the student who was assigned the topic of Food and Drink brought in some wine. She doubtless received an A++.

Around this time I was told that I had been chosen for the Departmental Honors program. This meant that I was to do a special project for one of my English classes in each semester of my junior year, along with a yearlong project for my senior year.

The only English class I was taking that semester was Dr. Hampden’s, so I approached him one day in his office and told him I had been tapped for Departmental Honors.

“Congratulations, dear boy!”

I then awkwardly asked him what special project he wanted me to work on.

“Oh, just keep doing what you’re doing, dear boy!”

For a long time I felt mildly guilty about not doing a special project that semester, but Dr. Hampden had taken the matter out of my hands.

And though it’s almost 40 years later, I can still see him in that office that day: a short, chunky man sitting at his desk, hunched over it, a cigarette in one hand, a desk lamp casting a dim light – it might as well have been a shadow – on his weathered face.

He was obviously – I realize now – hung over, and with supreme good manners, he was trying to get me out of his office.

During the next semester, while I was doing my honors project for another professor’s class, I took Dr. Hampden’s other elective course, Restoration Drama, which he himself referred to as “Dirty Plays,” and with good reason. The other students and I spent most of the classes reading scenes from the racy plays at our desks. He seemed to enjoy that.

I never really got to know Dr. Hampden, and after graduation I didn’t see him for years until one day, when I was taking the bus downtown to my job at the newspaper and saw him crossing a busy intersection with a pleasantly oblivious – perhaps dangerously oblivious – look on his face.

On several occasions I saw him in the food court at the downtown mall. I’m not sure I ever saw him eat anything; I do remember seeing him with that same mildly happy, buzzed look on his face.

He had retired by this time, and he apparently had nowhere else to go. I never knew whether he had any family back in Boston or what he did with his time when he wasn’t getting a buzz on.

I never approached him. Chances are that he wouldn’t have remembered me anyway, though he probably would have had the good breeding to at least pretend he knew who I was.

And as I myself got older I would think about that day in his office when he obviously didn’t feel that well, and I would wonder what his life was like, if it was like anything much at all, despite all the money he was supposed to have had.

Was he filled with regrets? Was there someone special in his life whom he’d let “get away”? Or who had broken off with him? Was he always self-conscious about his height?

Did he drink to forget? Or did he just drink?

Whatever his past, or present, in the food court he seemed happy enough.

Maybe he originally started drinking to forget, and maybe now, years later, he was blissfully beyond the point of forgetting.

One day Dr. Hampden’s obliviousness apparently proved fatal – he was struck while walking in the road.

One of his colleagues – my old professor who helped him put out that wastebasket fire – said it was a blessing. He didn’t go into detail.

I suppose I could try to say something facile and clichéd about Dr. Hampden – how, even later in life, he taught me something. Except that I’m not sure he taught me anything much aside from an appreciation for Samuel Johnson and his times, and those “dirty plays” – and perhaps, now that I think of it, a further appreciation for the mysteries behind every human heart.

The guy who stayed home

Earlier today I was considering writing something about Dick Clark.

But a lot of other people have been writing about him, and I wasn’t sure I had much to add. I never watched “Bandstand” much, but I did watch a lot of “Pyramid” episodes and I had to admire his smoothness – not only with the celebs and contestants, but also with the crew.

One time I heard him telling the stage manager – on air – to tell the director (who’d wanted him to go to commercial instead of talking further with a contestant), that he, Clark, would “pick up the time” later.

In other words, “You do your job and let me do mine.”

All very smooth, without anger, without missing a beat.

But there didn’t seem to be much more I could say about Dick Clark.

That is, until a few minutes ago, when I heard that Alan Milair died.

I’m sure that, unless you've lived where I live, and have lived here a long time, you’re asking yourself who Alan Milair is.

Fair enough.

I guess you could say that Alan Milair is the Dick Clark who stayed home.

Alan Milair had a 30-year career in local radio and TV. During that time, I think he worked for only one station.

And he had a million-dollar voice. Smooth. Mellow. Rich.

If you were a program director in the 1950s, and if you needed someone to host a show geared for housewives who wanted a touch of romance as they did the vacuuming, fed the baby and did all the other things that they didn’t get nearly enough appreciation for, Alan Milair was your man. He could fill the time between records by almost caressing his audience with his resonant, oh-so-understanding voice.

Nothing in bad taste, mind you. No double entendres. The very essence of a non-shock jock.

He had a voice that belonged on a dessert tray.

And he was a member of that generation of broadcasters who had to know how to do everything -- spin records, do the news and weather, maybe even sweep the floor.

As far as television is concerned, if you’re my age and grew up in my town, you’ll probably always remember him best for “Monster Movie Matinee.”

“Monster Movie Matinee” ran on Saturday afternoons. It offered the usual assortment of monster/horror pictures, from old classics like “Frankenstein” and “Dracula” to newer and more cultish ones like “Bucket of Blood” and, of course, “Little Shop of Horrors” – anything in Roger Corman’s oeuvre was fair game.

And in a way, the Corman pictures, with their cheapness and tongue-in-cheek tone, were better suited to “Monster Movie Matinee” than the Universal horror classics.

This is because “Monster Movie Matinee,” in addition to having a budget that today would probably get you an order of fries at McDonald’s, did not take itself very seriously either.

To say the least.

The host of “Monster Movie Matinee” was a guy named Epal, who wore a beard and an eye patch. Epal was played by the late Bill Everett, who was also a lifer in local broadcasting. Everett also hosted the Popeye show, where he appeared as Salty Sam, and if you were really in the know, you knew that Everett’s real last name was Lape – Epal spelled backwards!

Epal was the assistant to a mysterious figure who was played by Milair and went by the name of Dr. E. Nick Witty. I can’t tell you much about what Dr. Witty looked like because we never saw much of him, though we did indeed hear him, as you can see in this clip from the show’s early days.

I suppose it’s possible that no one from a bigger station in a bigger market ever tried to woo Alan Milair away. But I’d have a hard time believing it, and if you just heard him in that clip, I suspect you’ll agree with me.

And it’s certainly not unusual for people from my area to go on to Bigger and Better Things in broadcasting. The director of a local children’s show eventually won an Emmy for directing Sonny and Cher. And I could name a couple of national TV reporters who used to work around here.

But I don’t think Alan Milair ever saw my town as a stopping-off place to the big time. I suspect he liked it here just fine.

I don’t mean to imply that someone like Alan Milair is superior to someone like Dick Clark or anyone else in broadcasting who moves on to greater fame.

But, as Willy Loman’s wife might say, attention must be paid to people like Alan Milair.

Willy Loman himself maintained that it was important to be well-liked.

But being well-liked was something Alan Milair never had to worry about. And I think that those of us who watched and listened to him will always like him all the more for sticking around here and amusing us kids on many a dreary Saturday.

At the puzzle tournament

(SPOILER ALERT: If you are among the solvers who will be doing this year’s American Crossword Puzzle Tournament puzzles by mail, you shouldn’t read this now.)

Saturday

As the official competition in the tournament gets under way, I am competing with about 600 other solvers.

And a computer program.

The program, named Dr. Fill, has been designed by Matt Ginsberg, a software engineer who also makes crossword puzzles, many of which have been published in The New York Times, whose puzzle editor, Will Shortz, has run this tournament for 35 years.

One of Ginsberg’s Times puzzles was constructed in collaboration with actress Dana Delany, whom I find at least a little more interesting than Dr. Fill but who, unfortunately, is not at the tournament.

Will has announced that anyone who beats the computer program will receive a button that says “I beat Dr. Fill.”

Soon, all of us – and it – get to work on the first puzzle. The first puzzle of the tournament is supposed to be pretty easy, and I’m not surprised to learn that it’s by Lynn Lempel, who often does the Monday Times crossword – the easiest of the week.

Her tournament puzzle, “Plus Ten,” adds an X to five familiar phrases to form the theme answers – GREAT APE, for example, becomes “GREAT APEX.”

I finish this fairly quickly but, once again, take perhaps a little too much time double-checking the answers.

Between puzzles, I chat with the woman next to me. It’s her first time at the tournament, and she’s not that frequent a crossword solver. She works for a utility company and often faces deadlines, and she wishes that the competitors didn’t have to try to outrace a clock.

If women were running this tournament, she says, it would be a lot different – it would have a more laid-back atmosphere, with contestants occasionally consulting with each other (“What are you getting for 31 Across?”).

Oh, I say. You mean something like a “crossword bee”?

Exactly! she says.

I nod pleasantly, though I know that the odds of her idea taking hold are about the same as the odds of me collaborating with Dana Delany on anything.

Puzzle Two and Puzzle Five are supposed to be the two hardest. Given the panic attack Puzzle Two gives me, I am for a time unsure that I will make it to Puzzle Five.

The title and description alone raise my blood pressure:

Boustrophedon: adj. (and n.): having alternate lines running from left to right and right to left.

I freeze upon seeing that first word – a word that I’ve not only never heard of, but which looks a lot like Bouchercon, the name of the annual mystery festival that I have sometimes attended. I barely read the description and for a moment worry that it’s going to be one of those puzzles where a word goes to the end of the grid, then continues vertically.

What’s more, the puzzle is by Patrick Merrell. So I know I’m not going to be let off easy.

What even more: I have a problem getting started with the puzzle. It seems to take a long time for me to find a clue that I can grab hold of, and even then it leads me nowhere, so I have to look elsewhere, while envisioning myself up in my room, packing.

Somehow I calm down and gain some footholds and learn to deal with such theme answers as DLIEFAGNIWOLP for PLOWING A FIELD.

And despite my initial moments of panic, I manage to finish the puzzle – and finish it eight minutes early. A lot of other people don’t finish it as quickly, if at all.

The next puzzle, “Letterheads” by Patrick Berry, has a slightly larger grid but is more gentle. The theme answers involving adding one letter to the beginning of two initials, so that PS I LOVE YOU become GPS I LOVE YOU.

After the lunch break, it’s on to Puzzle 4, “Two for the Show,” by Ian Livengood, in which the theme answers are two-word phrases made up of one-word movie titles, so that CHICAGO and SEVEN become CHICAGO SEVEN. I pretty much sail through this.

Between puzzles, I chat with the very nice young man who is now sitting next to me, and he mentions how age and cultural references can affect a puzzle-solver’s progress. Puzzle 3, for example, asked for the name of “Grandpa Munster’s portrayer.” A baby boomer like me instantly writes in AL LEWIS, whereas my young competitor has never heard of him – or even Grandpa Munster. I sympathize but note that references to modern-day pop singers can cause me to fizzle.

But enough chitchat, for here comes Puzzle 5, which is traditionally thought of as the hardest puzzle of the tournament – or, to put it more bluntly, “The Bastard Puzzle.”

It’s by Patrick Blindauer (why are so many devilishly difficult puzzles created by people called Patrick?), and it’s called “Going Underground: Follow the tunnels made by five creatures to complete this pesky puzzle.”

Oh, great.

Up to now I have never completed a Puzzle 5. I’ll again give it my best shot, but my usual strategy is to solve as many “straight” clues as possible while hoping that somehow I’ll be able to figure out the theme.

I know that something really dastardly is up when I see the clue “1958 Curtis/Poitier film” in the left part of the grid and, unlike my young neighbor, instantly know the answer is THE DEFIANT ONES – but then see there is space for only seven letters.

So I write in THEDEFI and hope that somehow everything will make sense some point.

Eventually, it does; an answer in the right part of the grid is ONES. Aha – the ANT – the “creature” is missing! Turns out the other theme answers are similar. What I don’t find out until much later is that the word ANT appears diagonally between THEDEFI and ONES, and between the parts of the other theme answers.

But it doesn’t really matter because I soon realize that – wonder of wonders – I have a good chance of completing Puzzle 5! But there’s very little time left. By the time I complete the last part – in the lower right – there’s less than a minute on the clock, so I don’t take my usual amount of time for checking (and hey, haven’t I sometimes taken too much time?) and hand the puzzle in with maybe less than 30 seconds to spare.

The last puzzle of the day, by Elizabeth C. Gorski, is “Foodie Film Festival,” with punning them answers that include A LEEK OF THEIR OWN and SILENCE OF THE CLAMS. I do pretty well on this, then leave to eventually have some food of my own.

The Saturday night social program includes a demonstration of Dr. Fill by its creator, Matt Ginsberg.

It turns out the doc hasn’t been doing that well – Puzzles 2 and 5 have posed some problems. (Welcome to the club, Doc.)

And I begin to hope that, for their own sake, the folks running the tournament have a lot of those buttons ready.

Later that evening, I get a very pleasant surprise – a check of the results, posted online, shows that I scored 1170 on Puzzle 5 – meaning I got all the answers right.

Better yet, my current ranking is 113 – up from 195 last year! Way up!

Wow, I think, if I do really well on the last puzzle I might crack the top 100! And move from C division to B division (the top 20 percent)!

And rumor has it that the last puzzle – Puzzle 7 – which, to be more precise, is the last puzzle everyone solves, is by Merl Reagle. Reagle does a weekly Sunday-size puzzle that appears in my local newspaper, and lately I’ve often been solving it in less than 20 minutes. Given that I’ve had a lot of experience doing Reagle’s puzzles, and that Puzzle 7 is a 45-minute puzzle, with the usual 25-point bonus for each minute left on the clock after you turn it in….

Is Sunday going to be a great day, or what?

Sunday

To answer that last question:

What.

Before the last puzzle I check the standings and find that my score for Puzzle 5 is now 1000, which – I’ll spare you the math – means that I made one mistake (and that someone, darn him or her, double-checked it).

So I’m now at 130 overall.

OK, I think, I’ll burn some rubber with the Reagle puzzle and climb back up.

An excellent strategy. Napoleon would have applauded me.

Except for the fact that Puzzle 7 isn’t by Merl Reagle.

It’s by Mike Shenk. The puzzle editor of The Wall Street Journal – who has sometimes designed the championship puzzle.

Uh oh.

Fortunately, the puzzle, “At Last!,” has a theme that I grasp fairly quickly – AT is added to familiar phrases, so that, for example, THE POWERS THAT BE becomes THE POWERS THAT BEAT.

I get through the puzzle as quickly as I can, though Shenk has planted a couple of words that almost stymie me – MHO and, particularly near the end, TRIGRAM. Although I finish in fairly good time, I wish I’d done better.

Merl, where were you when I needed you?

That’s the last puzzle I have to solve. Not much more for me to do than check out, check my bags, watch a variety show including some talented contestants (and emceed very capably by Liane Hansen, formerly of NPR’s “Weekend Edition Sunday”) and watch the championship finals.

The A division finals feature Dan Feyer, who won the last two tournaments; Tyler Hinman, a frequent winner who (as I recall) hasn’t competed with Feyer in a final before; and Anne Erdmann, who was also one of last year’s three A division finalists.

Who won? You can see it here.

I, of course, didn’t do nearly as well: My final standing is 142. Still, it’s nothing to complain about, considering that I was 195 last year.

Still…

For a while I can’t help being a little put out at Will. Why did he – or one of his minions, acting for him – feel it necessary to recheck my Puzzle 5?

But eventually I have an epiphany.

Will, in his infinite wisdom, was doing me a favor. (A favor I wouldn’t have minded doing without, but I think I see his reasoning.)

As a puzzle editor, Will has to be a master of detail, and to run a tournament like this he has to be a master of detail to the nth power.

And one of those details is this blog. Believe it or not, I know that Will has read my tournament blog entries on at least one occasion – last year. I even got a nice email from him, which I still have, though as yet I have been unable to have it bronzed.

So this year I’m sure Will was thinking, “Gee, how can we make Murphy’s blog more interesting this year, instead of the usual blah, dumb jokes?

“I know – let’s add some suspense. Let’s make him THINK he’s at 113. It’ll boost his morale – and add to the drama. Of course he won’t like it when we bring him down to earth at 142nd place, but hey, it’s his fifth time here -- it’s too early for him to be at 113, much less in the top 100. After all, Dr. Richard Kimble didn’t catch the one-armed man in the fifth episode of ‘The Fugitive,’ did he? So let’s make Murphy sweat some more – that way he’ll appreciate it all the more when (or I should say if) he crashes the top 100!”

Gee, thanks, Will. I think.

And by now you might be wondering what my mistake was.

It turns out I stumbled on a one-word clue: “Slight.” I took this as a noun and wrote SLANDER. It should have been SLENDER, as I might well have figured out had I checked one of the crosses and noticed that it read as DIA when it should have been DIE. (“It may be loaded.”)

I later figure out that without this gaffe I would now be at, maybe, 123.

Talk about losing by a slender thread. (Or maybe a slander thread?)

Still, 142 isn’t bad.

I also finished 10th in my geographical division, though I must acknowledge that this was almost certainly because one of the very top solvers in my region suddenly took ill this year. Hope you’re feeling better, Rex.

Though I’m mostly happy with 142, I do have one final bone to pick with Will.

If I have to fall from grace, did it have to be as far as 142nd place?

Considering that, um, Dr. Fill finished one notch above me, at 141?

There’s such a thing as overkill, Will….

Back from Brooklyn

In a few days I hope to provide a full account of my latest trip to the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.

In the meantime, a couple of highlights from my trip:

While at LaGuardia for the first time, I noticed an establishment called Slip Mahoney's Bar and Grill.

This caught my eye because, as you might know, Slip Mahoney was the character portrayed by Leo Gorcey in the Bowery Boys movies, which I enjoyed as a kid.

I didn't visit the place, but as I looked at it from the outside I could see no trace of Leo.

Or Huntz Hall.

Or Gabriel Dell.

Heck, you would have thought that at least Billy Halop would have shown up.

I told my friend and fellow Bowery Boys devotee Dan Valenti about this, and he asked me whether there was a Louie's Sweet Shop next to Slip's place. (Louie being the irascible Louie Dumbrowsky, played by Bernard Gorcey, Leo's father.)

I said I could find no trace of Louie, though I hadn't checked out the Jamba Juice stand.

Dan said that Louie would more likely be running an Orange Julius place.

Or (he said) as Slip would have called it, Orange Juniper....

After the tournament I went to a diner and ordered some ziti with half a chicken breast.

Although the serving was ample, the marinara sauce was too spicy for my taste.

And it didn't help when I looked around and saw this sign, posted prominently:

FIRST AID KIT

& CPR

RESUCITATION (sic) KITS

ARE LOCATED AT

THE CASHIER'S POST

All of this placed above another sign, which, taken in context, added to my feeling of unease:

OUTGOING

ORDERS

'E-N-C-Y-C-L-O-P-E-D-I-A!'

If you're over the age of maybe 55 or so, that headline might bring a smile to your face.

If you're not, you're probably scratching your head, and rightly so.

For those of you who came in late, back in the 1950s the original "Mickey Mouse Club" would occasionally present a feature what was supposed to educate and entertain us stay-at-home Mouseketeers.

How educational were they? Maybe not very, considering that I can't remember any of the topics.

But what I do remember -- along with a lot of other baby boomers -- is that these segments were narrated by Jiminy Cricket (voiced by Cliff Edwards), who opened them with a tune in which he spelled out (or maybe rather sang out) the above letters.

I thought of Jiminy today as I read that the folks behind the Encyclopaedia Britannica (yes, they insist on that extra "a") plan to discontinue their print edition, though the content will continue to be available online.

This saddens me, because although my family never owned a set of the EB, we did have another kind of encyclopedia, which I remember fondly.

It was called the Golden Book Encyclopedia, and you could buy one volume a week at the grocery store where we did our shopping.

It's entirely appropriate that these books were sold at a food store, because I almost literally gobbled up each volume after we got it home.

One thing that appealed to me was the covers. Each was cleverly laid out with objects from that particular volume. The cover of Book 14: Silk to Textiles, for example, featured stamps, a starfish and a photo of a spacecraft nearing what appeared to be the moon. I always looked forward to seeing what the next cover would look like.

I also especially remember the maps of the various countries and states, with their various symbols. As I recall, a tiny picture of a steer's head (I suppose today we'd call it an icon) indicated that they had a lot of cows in Texas. I also think there were one or two pictures of oil wells there, too.

I learned a lot from these books. I probably forgot a lot of it too. Perhaps my mental hard drive erased this information to make room for all the stuff I wound up learning (willingly or not) during the next 50 years.

Perhaps what I liked most about these books is that a new surprise awaited you on every page. ("Oh, I didn't know that part of your ear is made of this stuff called cartilage!")

I suppose you could argue that surfing the Internet provides its share of surprises, too. And it would certainly be hypocritical of me, a blog writer, to disown the Internet.

But I often find that on the Web my attention ricochets from one topic to another, kind of like a mental pinball, and I forget what I was trying to find out in the first place. (Assuming I was trying to find out anything in particular to begin with.)

No, there's still something to be said for leisurely turning the pages of an encyclopedia, or some other reference book, from left to right, never knowing what you might find next, kind of the intellectual equivalent of the Sunday drive. Whereas a "drive" on the Internet can often lead to zigzags and detours that lead to information that can be questionable at best -- kind of like a smart-aleck kid who moves an arrow on a road sign and sends you to Albuquerque when you're trying to get to Poughkeepsie.

Then again, I'm not sure I'd like to re-examine any of the Golden Book Encyclopedia's volumes. Perhaps I'd find that the entries explicitly or implicitly reflected attitudes that we'd shy away from now. Or that some of the entries were just plain dumb. All of which would prove, once again, that the past is often best revisited from a distance -- and without high-powered binoculars.

But whatever its worth as an educational document, I'll always be grateful to the Golden Book Encyclopedia for the thrill it gave me each week -- the thrill of learning something new. A thrill that, over the last 50 years, still hasn't gotten old.