We’re fairly regular Ellen Degeneres watchers. She’s funny, she does good interviews, she showcases lots of young, fairly unknown singers and bands. Yesterday, the featured singer was Duffy, singing “Well, Well, Well.” The title words were the only words we could decipher, once again the singer cloaked in a musical cacophony of pounding guitars, drums, and an acrobatic, gyrating young woman on keyboard. I just don’t understand most musical taste these days. To compare Duffy to someone like Barbra Streisand or Lea Michelle from “Glee” is like comparing a Big Mac to a filet mignon, or a Sun City West backyard pool to an Olympic swimming venue, or a copper penny to a $20 gold piece, or a chunk of quartz to the Hope diamond, or a novel by Nicole Richie to Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. But I fear I’ve stretched the comparison too far. And speaking of Nicole Richie, another of Ellen’s guests. She was there touting her second novel. It may be sour grapes on my part, but that really pisses me off, the fact that anyone with a connection, like her father Lionel Richie, can get a book published. It’s just not fair. I’ve spent thirty years pursuing the nearly impossible dream of getting a novel legitimately published, thirty years of non-success. And then this dingbat comes along and gets two novels published. The next thing you know, her ditzy buddy, Paris Hilton, will come out with a book titled The Blahned Bommer.
I've always collected errors in diction, things people mis-hear, like "windshield factor" and "the next store neighbors." Years ago, one of my students wrote an essay in which she described the world as being harsh and cruel, "a doggy-dog world." I've since come to think she may have been more astute and accurate than those who describe it in the usual way. My Stories - Mobridge Memories -
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Most of what I've written has been published as e-books and is available at Amazon. Match Play is a golf/suspense novel. Dust of Autumn is a bloody one set in upstate New York. Prairie View is set in South Dakota, with a final scene atop Rattlesnake Butte. Life in the Arbor is a children's book about Rollie Rabbit and his friends (on about a fourth grade level). The Black Widow involves an elaborate extortion scheme. Happy Valley is set in a retirement community. Doggy-Dog World is my memoir. And ES3 is a description of my method for examining English sentence structure.
In case anyone is interested in any of my past posts, an archive list can be found at the bottom of this page. I'd appreciate any feedback you may have by sending me an e-mail note--jertrav33@aol.com. Thanks for your interest.
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