I can just hear Confucius saying it....

At the end of my lunch at a local Chinese restaurant, I dutifully cracked open my fortune cookie and found the following message:

"Keep on keeping on."

The Mary Murphy who wasn't my sister

When I heard about Newsweek's plans to scuttle its print edition, I thought of Mary Murphy.

Mary wasn't related to us, but she was a friend of the family. She was from Ireland and worked for many years as a private nurse. By the time I knew her, she had retired and, having never married, lived alone in an apartment up in the next block.

Once a week, weather permitting, she would walk down to our house to visit for a while, often bringing her copy of Newsweek, which she would leave with us.

At the time (I was a kid), she was probably the oldest person I knew.

I particularly remember one time when we visited her in her apartment. I noticed a paperback book on a stand in her living room. It had a maroon cover and an odd but intriguing title:

“The Catcher in the Rye.”

I didn't open it. I figured it was a book for grown-ups, perhaps especially for elderly ones.

Some time later, my Aunt Helen was shocked to learn that my older sister, also named Mary and then a teenager, was reading the same book.

Leaping to my sister's defense, I told my aunt that the other Mary Murphy also had a copy of the book.

Aunt Helen, turning the full force of her indignation on me, said, "Mary Murphy is eighty-aughty years old!"

Yes, she actually said "eighty-aughty."

I wish I could say I learned a lot from the senior Mary Murphy. I had the impression that her career had taken her to many places. And of course she'd lived in Ireland.

But at best I just sat around bored while she chatted with other family members. She was usually kind enough to try to involve me in the conversation (and seemed to actually believe I might have some insight into the world’s problems), but although I was polite I could never think of anything to say.

At worst – and I'll always be ashamed of this – I sometimes quietly resented her visits when they delayed or interrupted a family game of Jeopardy.

If I were really as bright as so many people said I was, I would have paid attention, asked questions and remembered whatever she told us about her past life and surroundings.

One thing I do remember:

Once she was talking about how she worked for someone in Dayton, Ohio.

She said she knew a little boy in the neighborhood who spent a lot of time by himself.

He was an only child. His family had money, but his parents didn't get along, and he often seemed sad.

Years later Mary was on vacation somewhere, and the little boy, who had grown up and entered show business, was performing nearby.

She thought about going to see him – she was obviously happy for his success – but she decided against it. Too shy, I guess.

The chances that he will ever read this are probably next to nil at best, but just the same (and because I somehow feel I owe it to her), I’d like for him to know that my friend Mary Murphy always remembered Jonathan Winters.

"Seventy-six paper clips led the big parade...."

During a lull in my workday, I sat back and looked at the mess on my desk – mostly papers and pens. Red pens, to be exact, and a lot of them.

(When you proofread things for a living, you don’t want to have a red pen run dry and not have another one – or, better yet, many of them – within easy reach.)

But there was something else on my desk, something that hadn’t been there the day before, something I think I prize even more than those pens:

A box of paper clips.

If you work in an office, especially one in which many pieces of paper are continually routed from one employee to another, I suspect you know what I mean -- especially if most of those pieces of paper have other pieces of paper attached to them, and if, during the course of a typical day, you ride so many paper trails that you can’t keep from getting at least a little saddle sore.

On this particular box of paper clips, which the office receptionist had obtained for me just that morning, I noticed that the wording was in English and French.

And I discovered something that was quaint and even charming. (Or should I say charmante?)

What I discovered was the French word for “paper clip.” I never would have thought of it in at least a hundred years, and I had six years of French. (Which sometimes felt like a hundred years.)

And that word, mes amis, is:

Trombone.

You could have knocked me over with a plume.

Because I saw the resemblance immediately. And I’ll bet that you do too, especially considering that I’ve been nice enough to dig up and post these two public-domain photos.

Paper clip = trombone.

Very clever. And to think that these are the same people who think that Jerry Lewis is God.

(Having said that, I should admit that as a kid I would sometimes go to a local movie house to see the latest Lewis flick – “Don’t Give Up the Ship,” “Cinderfella,” “Who’s Minding the Store” among them – but still.)

The paper clip/trombone translation reminded me of how my uncle, who spent a lot of time in Canada, would sometimes bring us stuff from there that had labeling in two languages.

One time he brought us a bag of Kraft marshmallows, which taught me that the French word for “marshmallow” is “guimauve.”

This morning I bought groceries, then got home and realized I had forgotten to get bread.

But somehow I remember “guimauve.”

Perhaps I should do my grocery shopping in Canada....

A trivial pursuit that has yet to bear fruit

While watching “Jeopardy!” the other day, I heard Johnny Gilbert announce that one of the contestants was from Greeley, Colo.

I immediately remembered that Ted Mack was from Greeley, Colo.

In case you're too young to remember, Ted Mack (that's him at left) was for many years the host of the “Original Amateur Hour.” The program began on radio, hosted by someone named Major Bowes (Major of exactly what I don't know), and Mack eventually succeeded him. The program was the granddaddy of “American Idol” and similar shows, and some folks who appeared on it later became famous, including Pat Boone, Beverly Sills, Ann-Margret and (as a member of The Hoboken Four), Frank Sinatra.

I remember the program from its twilight years, when CBS showed it on Sundays, usually late in the day. I can’t remember anyone I ever saw on it, though I do remember that it was brought to us by Geritol (a tonic that was ubiquitous in early TV commercials) and another product called Serutan (“Nature Spelled Backwards”).

I can’t say I was a big fan of the show, so you might well wonder why I happened to remember Mr. Mack’s birthplace.

I can explain in two words:

Information Please.

That was the name of an almanac my family had, and the name came from an old radio quiz show. The book included a listing of famous people, their birth dates and birthplaces and (even better) their real names. If it weren’t for the Information Please almanac, I might never have known that Red Buttons was born Aaron Chwatt or that Raymond Burr (born in 1917) was a year younger than Jackie Gleason.

I also learned more about Milton Berle (born Milton Berlinger in 1908) and Wally Cox (born Wallace Maynard Cox), who came into this world in 1924. Not to mention game-show great Bill Cullen (to be precise, William Lawrence Cullen) who made his debut in 1920.

And I still remember that Imogene Coca was born in Philadelphia, Pa. – but apparently would not give her year of birth. It’s a secret she would have found impossible to keep these days, but I’m nothing if not a gentleman, and if you want that piece of personal information, you can look her up yourself.

Then again, when Andy Griffith died earlier this year, I was sure he’d been born in 1928. But the Internet Movie Database says he was born in 1926.

Perhaps my memory failed me.

Or perhaps my memory didn’t fail me, but Information Please got it wrong.

Or maybe Mr. Griffith shaved a couple of years off his age when the almanac folks came a-calling.

But Sheriff Andy wouldn’t lie to us – would you, Ange?

God knows why I immersed myself in this section of the almanac when I probably could have been learning much more useful stuff. But maybe someday it will prove useful, especially if I finally get to hear Johnny Gilbert announce my own name and hometown on “Jeopardy!” And if the categories that day include “Obscure Celebrities Named Ted” and “Famous Former Aarons.”

What are the odds of that happening? If I had to make a wager, I wouldn’t make it a true Daily Double….

At the (old) movies: 'Meet Nero Wolfe'

Notes from a recent gathering of the local cinephile society….

If you’re a mystery reader, chances are that once you’ve read a whodunit, you never pick it up again.

But if you’re an experienced mystery reader, you might have exceptions to this rule.

Mine include Ross Macdonald, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler -- and Rex Stout.

Stout’s genius lay in his creation of two characters who were uniquely American mirror images of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.

Perhaps “funhouse mirror” images would be a better way to put it, for unlike Holmes, Stout’s Nero Wolfe did not like to work and especially did not like to leave his house. And unlike Watson, Archie Goodwin, Wolfe’s assistant, who narrates the Wolfe stories, isn’t exactly in awe of the lead character.

Archie’s brisk prose style and his arguments with Wolfe – and Wolfe’s arguments with the long-suffering Lt. Cramer of Homicide -- make the Wolfe stories worth reading, and that’s a very good thing because, as even some of Stout’s admirers will tell you, the plots of the Wolfe stories are generally not much to write to Baker Street about.

The first Wolfe book, “Fer-de-Lance,” was published in 1934, when Stout was in his late forties. One year earlier, another late bloomer, Erle Stanley Gardner, three years younger than Stout, published his first Perry Mason book.

Around this time, “The Thin Man,” based on Hammett’s last novel, became a surprise hit for MGM, so it’s probably no coincidence that other studios decided to see what they could do with (or, perhaps better yet, to) Wolfe and Mason.

Warners made several movies based on Mason books, but they were heavily influenced by the “Thin Man” film’s mix of comedy and mystery. As played in most of the movies by Warren William (the B movie equivalent of William Powell), Mason was a wise-cracking bon vivant, and there was so much joking around that the plots, although faithful to the books, seemed like grudging afterthoughts.

Gardner hated these movies, and when Mason reappeared years later on television, Gardner made sure he had total control over the show.

Something similar happened with Nero Wolfe. Columbia made two Wolfe movies, “Meet Nero Wolfe” (in 1936 with Edward Arnold) and “The League of Frightened Men,” made one year later with Walter Connolly.

“Meet Nero Wolfe” was based on “Fer-de-Lance,” and the screenwriters (there were three of them) pretty much stuck to the plot, probably because that was the least of their worries.

One big problem (in more ways than one) was the corpulent Wolfe himself. How were they going to make such a crabby character palatable to the movie-going public?

The books succeeded because Wolfe and his world were filtered through Archie Goodwin’s hilariously jaundiced first-person narration. The screenwriters and director Herbert Biberman couldn’t rely on this literary device, so they decided to make Wolfe cranky one moment and jovial the next. Edward Arnold was a good enough actor to get away with this, but the fat guy we’re seeing is obviously an impostor.

Archie doesn’t fare much better. He’s played by Lionel Stander, the character actor who is perhaps best known for playing Max in “Hart to Hart.” He’s likable, but he’s no Archie.

Also likable is the actress who plays Wolfe’s client, a young woman named Rita Cansino, who in a few short years metamorphosed into an even more likable actress named Rita Hayworth.

Not likable at all is Dennie Moore, who plays Archie’s whiny girlfriend. If you want to get good and plastered, gulp down a strong drink every time she says “When’re we going to get married?” (In the books, Archie’s girlfriend is the infinitely more charming and sophisticated Lily Rowan.)

I probably won’t be giving much away by telling you that the plot involves a golf club that has been made into a murder weapon – a type of gun that fires a needle that contains a fast-acting poison. At first glance it seems diabolically clever, until you begin to wonder why the killer went to so much trouble when he could have bought a real gun and ambushed the victim – or paid to have someone else do just that.

The movie also omits one of the book’s key scenes, in which Wolfe kills a deadly snake (the fer-de-lance of the title) in his home. As I recall, he smashes it with beer bottles. Try staging that in one take.

On its own terms, “Meet Nero Wolfe” is engaging enough if you forget that it’s supposed to be about Nero Wolfe.

A better idea: Get the DVD set of A&E’s Nero Wolfe series, where Wolfe is capably played by the late Maury Chaykin and Timothy Hutton is the perfect Archie Goodwin.

The series was filmed in Canada, and in a quaint (sometimes perhaps too quaint) touch, it features a sort of repertory company of actors who keep reappearing in various episodes as various characters, including George Plimpton and Kari Matchett, whom you might know better as Joan in the USA Network’s “Covert Affairs.”

On the whole, the series is – as Wolfe himself might put it – “satisfactory.”

To chew or not to chew?

According to experts (and I found them on the Internet, so they must be experts), you can determine the age of a tree by counting its "growth rings."

Similarly (and I didn't find this on the Internet, but you can trust me, right?) you can often determine the age of a human being by counting the number of pill bottles in his or her bathroom.

I'm not going to tell you how many bottles I have -- prescriptions plus vitamins -- but it's quite enough, thank you.

For many years I chewed all my pills before swallowing them -- even the tiniest aspirin.

Occasional gagging is a trait I share with one of my brothers, who, when making his First Communion, choked at the communion rail, prompting one of my mother's friends, who idolized Joe McCarthy, to speculate kiddingly that my brother might be a communist.

Which might well have prompted my mother to speculate silently but not at all kiddingly about her alleged friend's parentage.

In recent years I've had to man up because a couple of my prescriptions are time-released and have to be swallowed whole.

And, of course, one of these pills is rather big.

With the help of the Internet, I finally found a way to do this. I place the pill in my mouth, at the edge of my tongue, moisten it, then take in some water and bow my head, and darned if the thing doesn't obligingly float up to the back of my mouth and then head downward when I swallow.

At least that's the way it usually works.

Once in a while I get the timing wrong and the pill heads for what I once heard a TV doctor call the "Sunday throat." A quick cough averts this, and the pill changes course.

But every time this happens, I think of how ironic it is that something that's meant to keep me alive and well could so easily kill me.

And I can't escape the feeling that even now, some pharmaceutical company is rubbing its hands and licking its lips in anticipation as one of its flunkies works long into the night to develop the next pill I'll have to swallow. I fear to speculate about how big this pill will be, but it's a good bet that if they try it out on the nearest horse, and said horse -- communist or not -- can't get it down, it will be coming soon to a medicine cabinet near me.

Where I've been

If you're a particularly eagle-eyed and regular visitor to this establishment, you may have noticed a change in the wording of my profile, at right.

It no longer says "freelance."

This is because I am once again a full-timer after five years of freelancing.

A local firm unexpectedly made me an offer last month and I started a few weeks ago, so I've been busy, and time has slipped away.

I did mean to write about the recent passing of actor William Windom, who was a mainstay of television when I was growing up. I first knew of him as the slim and handsome lead actor in the sitcom "The Farmer's Daughter." I especially liked him in "My World and Welcome to It," the undeservedly short-lived series based on the works of James Thurber, whom Windom later played in a one-man show.

In later years a not-nearly-so-svelte Windom played the local doctor and confidant of Jessica Fletcher on "Murder, She Wrote" with an accent as thick as New England clam chowder, but I'm sure he was glad to get the work.

I was surprised that the obits I saw neglected to mention his particularly fine work in Rod Serling's "They're Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar," one of the best episodes of "Night Gallery," in which Windom plays an advertising man whose career -- and life -- are on the skids. I've read that Windom himself thought this was one of the best things he ever did.

I'm not about to argue with that.