Just in time for the holidays: Your comprehensive-ish guide to "Thurber (et al.) Tonight" (the whole dang series)

Including Woody Allen, Robert Benchley, Bob and Ray, Will Cuppy, Wolcott Gibbs, Ring Lardner, S. J. Perelman, Jean Shepherd, and E. B. White Tonight


All I asked Santa for was a better picture of the great Will Cuppy; the one I've been using looks like it was taken clandestinely while he was in the Witness Protection program. However, given my lack of faith in the fat phony, I wasn't optimistic that he'd come through, so I went searching on my own once again, and once again my Google Images search for "Will Cuppy" yielded the swell pix of Will Rogers and Ring Lardner which somehow always turn up, and once again I had to decide, with heavy heart, that no, they wouldn't really fill the gap better than what we've got. But then the above image turned up, and I figured that since it purports to be part of a book cover, the chap portrayed therein must actually be our Will. I have to say, though, that this pic creeps the dickens out of me, and so I don't think I'll be popping it into the Will Cuppy slot below. I think I'm actually going to be trying to forget I ever saw it. Sheesh!

by Ken

You look around and see all those decked halls, then close your eyes and hear all that fa-la-la-la-la-ing, and almost instantly you know something's up, am I right? Or else you read Noah's post last night, "Profiles In Cowardice: The Electoral College," and noticed that it's also Part 1 of his annual, er, tribute to the outgoing year, this time out: "2016: America Off The Rails."

That's right, it's the Holiday Season!

Okay, okay, I know it's been going on since about Columbus Day, if not Labor Day, and tonight is already Christmas Eve, for Bill O'Reilly's sake! I believe in letting the damned thing sneak up on me, so sneakily that with any luck it's almost past before it announces its presence. In a week or so we'll be ushering in a new year, and then begins the Countdown to Inauguration Day. And then we're on to wishing for a minimum of four more good years for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

So in the holiday spirit, or at least what passes for it hereabouts, I'm looking to slip into the DWT schedule some of what Tom and Ray Magliozzi, the Car Talk guys, liked to bill as "encore presentations" of memorable shows, which they hastened to explain were really things they pulled more or less randomly out of a box of old tapes. Naturally I never believed they were chosen entirely at random -- after all, there had to be some reason why those particular tapes were in that particular box, right? 

And I'm not going to be choosing entirely randomly either. On the theory that along about now we could all use a few laughs, and also because it's one of the things i'm proudest of having done, I'm planning to dig into the "Thurber (et al.) Tonight" series I did here way back in some previous century.

Earlier this year I did perform a couple of resurrections from the series. There was a June post called "Having trouble getting things done? Learn from the master, the great Robert Benchley," which brought back a piece I think of just about every day, "How to Get Things Done." (Short version: "The psychological principle is this: anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment.") Then in August I felt the itch again, and again it was a Benchley piece I had to bring back, in a post called "Comedy Tonight: 'Why We Laugh -- or Do We?': Another 'Benchley Tonight' Resurrection."

And I didn't even get (back) to what may be my very favorite Benchley piece, "A Little Sermon on Success." (As noted in the comprehensive-ish listing below -- "comprehensive-ish" in that I can't help feeling that I've missed an instance or two here or there -- you can find it here.) Not to mention the sublime "My Five- (or Maybe Six-) Year Plan." And . . . .

And no Thurber encore presentations at all! Yikes!

So I've cooked up this scheme for the holiday season (and perhaps the January slump season as well) to find post slots where I can slip in some especially cherished posts from these revered masters, and maybe some suggested "must reads" from among the stuff of theirs that was previously presented, at least until Howie cries out, "Please stop already!"

But, first things first (not my usual practice, as readers may be aware), I thought we would start with the comprehensive-ish listing itself. This is essentially unchanged from the version to which I have been providing a link since time immemorial. The one change I contemplated was to be able to pop in, finally, a better picture of Will Cuppy, but as noted in the photo caption above, that project came to a creepier-than-dead end.

And so, without further ado, excepting one tiny click-through --


Read more »

Having trouble getting things done? Learn from the master, the great Robert Benchley

Harking back to our comedy nights with Benchley plus James Thurber, Woody Allen, Bob and Ray, Will Cuppy, Wolcott Gibbs, Ring Lardner, S. J. Perelman, Jean Shepherd, and E. B. White


"The secret of my incredible energy and efficiency in getting work done is a simple one. I have based it very deliberately on a well-known psychological principle and have refined it so that it is now almost too refined. I shall have to begin coarsening it up again pretty soon.

"The psychological principle is this: anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment."

-- Robert Benchley, in "How to Get Things Done"

by Ken

Today, a long-delayed labor of love: the resurrection of a series that was itself a prolonged labor of love, running here in the late-night slot -- for which, in fact, the late-night slot was invented -- over a long and fondly remembered period. It started with Thurber but then went on to include all the names you see above. And in resurrecting it, the name that has crowded to the forefront of my consciousness is that of the great Robert Benchley, specifically in the form of the piece we're about to revisit: "How to Get Things Done," which was first published in the Chicago Tribune in 1930 and first appeared here as a "Benchley Tonight" post in January 2011.

Lately I've been trying to get bits of my life in order, or at any rate a bit more in order, and have had frequent occasion to talk about this as well, frequently with other people trying to do the same thing with their lives. As a result, I've had frequent occasion to try to synopsize this all-but-definitive treatise on how really and truly to get things done -- the secret, as our Bob puts it, to "how I manage to get so much work done and still keep looking so dissipated." By the way, I tried unsuccessfully to track down a picture of our Bob "riding to hounds" or "going to fancy-dress balls disguised as Louis XIV"; there don't seem to have been photographers present on these occasions.

So there was no question in my mind that of all the thousands of sublime pieces that appeared in this series, "How to Get Things Done" is the one for which present-day readers are likely to have the most urgent need. The master list for the series, by the way, can still be found here.



Now let's get down to business -- or, rather, business Benchley-style.

How to Get Things Done

by Robert Benchley

A GREAT MANY PEOPLE have come up to me and asked me how I manage to get so much work done and still keep looking so dissipated. My answer is "Don't you wish you knew?" and a pretty good answer it is, too, when you consider that nine times out of ten I didn't hear the original question.

But the fact remains that hundreds of thousands of people throughout the country are wondering how I have time to do all my painting, engineering, writing and philanthropic work when, according to the rotogravure sections and society notes I spend all my time riding to hounds, going to fancy-dress balls disguised as Louis XIV or spelling out GREETINGS TO CALIFORNIA in formation with three thousand Los Angeles school children. "All work and all play," they say.

The secret of my incredible energy and efficiency in getting work done is a simple one. I have based it very deliberately on a well-known psychological principle and have refined it so that it is now almost too refined. I shall have to begin coarsening it up again pretty soon.

The psychological principle is this: anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment.

Read more »

Perelman Tonight: On the town in Hong Kong -- Part 3 of "Mama Don't Want No Rice" (Chapter 4 of "The Swiss Family Perelman")

A pair of laughing almond eyes cajoled me onto the dance floor.

"Before long a pair of laughing almond eyes cajoled me to the dance floor, where my 1922-vintage toddle excited wide admiration, especially from those who had never seen a man dancing with a pair of laughing almond eyes."

-- from tonight's conclusion of "Mama Don't Want No Rice"

by Ken

Last night, still in Hong Kong,the family saw some of the sights, including Tiger Balm Gardens at Causeway Bay --

at once a potpourri of Madame Tussaud's waxworks, the castle of Otranto, and a theatrical prop shop, the whole tinctured with fumes of the Mexican drug called mescal. Just what its eighteen acres of nightmare statuary, turrets, grottoes, mazes, and cloud-borne pagodas signify, nobody on earth knows -- not even its proud parent, upon whom I called for a fast exegesis next morning at his headquarters in Wanchai Road.

That "proud parent" was "the noted patent-medicine taipan and philanthropist" Aw Boon Haw, and in last night's installment we indeed made the acquaintance of Mr. Haw himself:

Prior to our interview, Mr. Haw's interpreter, a Celestial version of Russell Birdwell, coated me with the customary schmaltz about his employer's humble origins, business genius, and benevolence. He then expanded with equal tedium on the virtues of Tiger Balm itself, which he unhesitatingly hailed as a specific for everything from St. Anthony's fire to milk leg. Apparently this was the universal belief, for I afterward observed Chinese air passengers rubbing it on their foreheads to forestall airsickness, at the same time smearing it furtively on the fuselage to insure the plane's staying aloft. For a preparation consisting largely of menthol and balsam, it undoubtedly has extraordinary powers. They may derive from Mr. Haw himself, a mettlesome old party in carpet slippers, who gripped my hand with such extraordinary vigor that I was forced whimpering to my knees.

Which is where we pick up, with the master's interview with Mr. Haw about to take a surprising turn.


SO HOW DOES OUR MR. P GET ON WITH
MR. HAW? TO FIND OUT, CLICK HERE

THE SWISS FAMILY PERELMAN: OUR STORY SO FAR

Chapter 1, "Rancors Aweigh"
Part 1 -- Launching yet another journey
Part 2 -- San Francisco-bound
Chapter 2, "Low Bridge -- Everybody Down"
Part 1 -- The journey begins!
Part 2 -- Hooray for Hollywood!
Part 3 -- "Move over, Asia"
Chapter 3, "The Wild Blue Yonder"
Part 1 -- "Aboard the President Cleveland"
Part 2 -- Putting on the feedbag
Part 3 -- Hawaii to Hong Kong
Chapter 4, "Mama Don't Want No Rice"
Part 1 -- Breaking news!
Part 2 -- "You rat!"

THURBER TONIGHT (including WOODY ALLEN, ROBERT BENCHLEY, BOB AND RAY, WILL CUPPY, WOLCOTT GIBBS, RING LARDNER, S. J. PERELMAN, JEAN SHEPHERD, and E. B. WHITE TONIGHT): Check out the series to date

#

Perelman Tonight: "You rat!" -- Part 2 of "Mama Don't Want No Rice" (Chapter 4 of "The Swiss Family Perelman")

"The terminal point for our soiled laundry
will be Bali," I announced masterfully.

"'In the hands of Disraeli, irony can be a formidable weapon.' I rejoined. 'In a lout it becomes merely offensive.'"

-- from tonight's installment of "Mama Don't Want No Rice"

by Ken

Last night we dived into Chapter 4 of The Swiss Family Perelman, "Mama Don't Want No Rice." which finds the family experiencing Hong Kong, and in which the eponymous "Mama" and the Perelman offspring launched a food revolt.

"I refuse to taste another spoonful of that excelsior!" announced the margravine in a ringing voice. "We've been on this blasted reef four days and all we've eaten is barnacles and boiled string! I want something that sticks to the ribs."

"Hamburgers!" the children caught up her refrain. "We want flapjacks with maple syrup -- chicken enchiladas -- apple pandowdy!"

In the ensuing hubbub the unwary paterfamilias let slip a hitherto closely concealed secret: that the ostensible destination of the journey, Siam, was on the itinerary or anywhere close, that in fact they were headed for the island of Celebes.

"Just a second, Jocko," she interrupted, quivering with anger. "Do I interpret this to mean that you inveigled me all the way to Siam and then switched the deck on us?"

"Of course not," I said placatingly. "It's a little extra dividend -- kind of a warm-up for Siam, so to speak. By the time you get back from the Moluccas -- if you ever do come back -- Siam will look like Rockefeller Plaza."

Exactly as instinct had warned me, the poor thing kicked up the most preposterous fuss. She drew a ghoulish picture of a remote and unexplored archipelago swarming with vampire bats, anthropophagi, and virulent diseases; cited some absurd fiddle-faddle about the war in Java (a grotesque designation for the minor police action in which the Dutch, to preserve order, had unavoidably bombed Djokjakarta and were being forced to kill a few thousand extremists); and having pilloried me as irresponsible, a delayed juvenile, and an erotic dreamer nourished on Terry and the Pirates, flung her arms around the children and defied Lucifer himself to drag her to the East Indies.

Which is where we pick up tonight, with an even more fraught itinerary fact about to be spilled.


FOR MR. P'S ATTEMPTS TO PACIFY MRS. P, CLICK HERE

THE SWISS FAMILY PERELMAN: OUR STORY SO FAR

Chapter 1, "Rancors Aweigh"
Part 1 -- Launching yet another journey
Part 2 -- San Francisco-bound
Chapter 2, "Low Bridge -- Everybody Down"
Part 1 -- The journey begins!
Part 2 -- Hooray for Hollywood!
Part 3 -- "Move over, Asia"
Chapter 3, "The Wild Blue Yonder"
Part 1 -- "Aboard the President Cleveland"
Part 2 -- Putting on the feedbag
Part 3 -- Hawaii to Hong Kong
Chapter 4, "Mama Don't Want No Rice"
Part 1 -- Breaking news!
Part 2 -- "You rat!"

THURBER TONIGHT (including WOODY ALLEN, ROBERT BENCHLEY, BOB AND RAY, WILL CUPPY, WOLCOTT GIBBS, RING LARDNER, S. J. PERELMAN, JEAN SHEPHERD, and E. B. WHITE TONIGHT): Check out the series to date

#

Perelman Tonight: Breaking news! -- Part 1 of "Mama Don't Want No Rice" (Chapter 4 of "The Swiss Family Perelman")

A quartet of foreign devils
manifestly aching to be plundered

"Certain obscure indications tended to establish them as an American family. In typically Yankee matriarchal style, the party was headed by a well-preserved woman of thirty-odd, her features distorted by an insensate craving for bargains and an iron resolve to paper the Thieves' Market with her husband's money."

-- from tonight's installment of "Mama Don't Want No Rice"

by Ken

In last night's installment, the Siam-bound Perelman clan descended on Hong Kong, which is where we rejoin them tonight, with our narrator trotting at his wife's heels,"as obedient as a coach-dog, . . . bearing in his arms the gallimaufry of opium lamps, snuff-bottles, door-knockers, sandalwood fans, and ceremonial scrolls she had bartered for his heart's blood."

In just a moment, however, an unintentional revelation will shake the family expedition to its very fiber.


WHAT THUNDERBOLT LIES IN WAIT FOR
THE FAMILY? TO FIND OUT, CLICK HERE

THE SWISS FAMILY PERELMAN: OUR STORY SO FAR

Chapter 1, "Rancors Aweigh"
Part 1 -- Launching yet another journey
Part 2 -- San Francisco-bound
Chapter 2, "Low Bridge -- Everybody Down"
Part 1 -- The journey begins!
Part 2 -- Hooray for Hollywood!
Part 3 -- "Move over, Asia"
Chapter 3, "The Wild Blue Yonder"
Part 1 -- "Aboard the President Cleveland"
Part 2 -- Putting on the feedbag
Part 3 -- Hawaii to Hong Kong

THURBER TONIGHT (including WOODY ALLEN, ROBERT BENCHLEY, BOB AND RAY, WILL CUPPY, WOLCOTT GIBBS, RING LARDNER, S. J. PERELMAN, JEAN SHEPHERD, and E. B. WHITE TONIGHT): Check out the series to date

#

Perelman Tonight: Hawaii to Hong Kong -- Part 3 of "The Wild Blue Yonder" (Chapter 3 of "The Swiss Family Perelman)

"Do you know what I had to pay
for a box of beauty clay here?"

"To what degree the destruction of Manila and the anguish her inhabitants had endured shook the equilibrium of some of our fellow travelers was made clear soon after our arrival there. 'Do you know what I had to pay for a box of beauty clay here?' I heard an elderly dragon with a resurrected face indignantly demand of her companion."

-- from tonight's installment of "The Wild Blue Yonder"

by Ken

As we left them last night, the Perelman clan is still chugging across the Pacific on the President Cleveland, but tonight they will put in at ports from Honolulu to Hong Kong. As the master notes:

It demands hair-trigger caution on a trans-Pacific cruise, not to say the reflexes of a circus aerialist, to dodge the sightseeing which becomes epidemic the moment the ship touches port. Before the screw has quite stopped revolving, busloads of tourists begin disappearing into the scrub to eavesdrop on some rachitic aborigine at his vespers or gape at the headstone of a forgotten conquistador.

FOR THE FAMILY'S PROGRESS FROM
HAWAII TO HONG KONG, CLICK HERE

THE SWISS FAMILY PERELMAN: OUR STORY SO FAR

Chapter 1, "Rancors Aweigh"
Part 1 -- Launching yet another journey
Part 2 -- San Francisco-bound
Chapter 2, "Low Bridge -- Everybody Down"
Part 1 -- The journey begins!
Part 2 -- Hooray for Hollywood!
Part 3 -- "Move over, Asia"
Chapter 3, "The Wild Blue Yonder"
Part 1 -- "Aboard the President Cleveland"
Part 2 -- Putting on the feedbag

THURBER TONIGHT (including WOODY ALLEN, ROBERT BENCHLEY, BOB AND RAY, WILL CUPPY, WOLCOTT GIBBS, RING LARDNER, S. J. PERELMAN, JEAN SHEPHERD, and E. B. WHITE TONIGHT): Check out the series to date

#

Perelman Tonight: Putting on the feedbag -- Part 2 of "The Wild Blue Yonder" (Chapter 3 of "The Swiss Family Perelman")

Asia-bound on the SS President Cleveland

"One of the worst offenders, though it costs me an effort to confess it, was my own good lady, who was frequently to be observed recumbent in a deck-chair following these debauches, peepers as heavy-lidded as a constrictor who has just engorged a chicken."

-- from tonight's installment of "The Wild Blue Yonder"

by Ken

Last night we reestablished contact with the globetrotting Perelman family, now safely ensconced aboard the SS President Cleveland headed west across the Pacific from San Francisco. As last night's installment concluded, our narrator was "reminded by the cool liquid notes of the luncheon gong that I had taken no cool liquids for almost five minutes" and duly "rectified that," then headed for the ship's dining room -- "we joined the other colorfully clad tax evaders streaming down for their midday carbohydrates."

In the click-through we're going to back up a bit and pick up shortly before the point where we left off last night.


THERE'S A LOT OF SERIOUS EATING GOING ON
ABOARD THE PRESIDENT CLEVELAND -- CLICK HERE

THE SWISS FAMILY PERELMAN: OUR STORY SO FAR

Chapter 1, "Rancors Aweigh"
Part 1 -- Launching yet another journey
Part 2 -- San Francisco-bound
Chapter 2, "Low Bridge -- Everybody Down"
Part 1 -- The journey begins!
Part 2 -- Hooray for Hollywood!
Part 3 -- "Move over, Asia"
Chapter 3, "The Wild Blue Yonder"
Part 1 -- "Aboard the President Cleveland"

THURBER TONIGHT (including WOODY ALLEN, ROBERT BENCHLEY, BOB AND RAY, WILL CUPPY, WOLCOTT GIBBS, RING LARDNER, S. J. PERELMAN, JEAN SHEPHERD, and E. B. WHITE TONIGHT): Check out the series to date

#

Perelman Tonight: Aboard the President Cleveland -- Part 1 of "The Wild Blue Yonder" (Chapter 3 of "The Swiss Family Perelman")

Six hundred escapists beyond the reach of Milton Berle
and the National Retail Credit Association

[drawing by Al Hirschfeld]

"As he perched on a stool in the Hurricane Bar, pensively sipping his aperitif and appraising his features in a small hand-mirror, he knew a moment of deep melancholy. What a chasm separated him from the trivial, shallow creatures about him, he thought sadly. Would it ever be possible to bridge the gulf, to free these poor blind grubs from their cocoons and aid them to soar with him onto the astral plane?"

-- from Chapter 3 of The Swiss Family
Perelman, "The Wild Blue Yonder"

by Ken

When, last June, we left the Swiss Family Perelman -- son Adam (12) and cello-toting daughter Abby (10) plus our narrator and his missus -- were trudging up the gangplank of the SS President Cleveland, heading west across the Pacific from San Francisco. The family had pulled up stakes from their New York City and rural-Pennslvania domiciles and were bound for Siam, based on the master's effusions, which he had already come to regret, from his earlier journey, the round-the-world jaunt in the company of his old pal Al Hirschfeld, the iconic theater illustrator and bon vivant, documented in Westward Ha! The last words we heard came from the mistress:

" 'Move over, Asia,' she said compassionately. 'Poor old continent. You don't know what's coming at you.' "


TO SEE THE PERELMAN FAMILY AT SEA, CLICK HERE

THE SWISS FAMILY PERELMAN: OUR STORY SO FAR

Chapter 1, "Rancors Aweigh"
Part 1 -- Launching yet another journey
Part 2 -- San Francisco-bound
Chapter 2, "Low Bridge -- Everybody Down"
Part 1 -- The journey begins!
Part 2 -- Hooray for Hollywood!
Part 3 -- "Move over, Asia"

THURBER TONIGHT (including WOODY ALLEN, ROBERT BENCHLEY, BOB AND RAY, WILL CUPPY, WOLCOTT GIBBS, RING LARDNER, S. J. PERELMAN, JEAN SHEPHERD, and E. B. WHITE TONIGHT): Check out the series to date

#

Perelman Tonight: "Move over, Asia" -- Part 5 of "The Swiss Family Perelman"

Illustrations by Al Hirschfeld

The Insurograph: A mechanism similar to a jukebox,
vending insurance at a quarter a throw

The social life of the [movie] industry . . . had changed little in two years. It still consisted of an endless round of buffets full of people one had met the previous evening, all of them exactly one day older. Dinner-party conversation in a manufacturing center like Lowell, Nashua, or Wilmington usually deals with shoes, blankets, or smokeless powder, relieved with gossip about the foreman of the bleaching room niggling up to the stockroom babes. In Beverly Hills it dealt with previews, credits, and the boudoir escapades of any couple who had failed to attend that evening.

-- from the conclusion of "Low Bridge -- Everybody Down"

by Ken

Last night we left the bound-for-the-Orient Perelman clan visiting SJP's despised old stomping ground, Hollywood, most recently visited two years earlier on his round-the-world trip (documented in Westward, Ha!). However, in tonight's installment we're reminded that this is 1949, meaning that we're in the early phase of one of the unhappiest chapters in the movie industry's history: its trial by, and capitulation to, the red-baiting witch hunts.


FOR THE CONCLUSION OF "LOW BRIDGE --
EVERYBODY DOWN," CLICK HERE

COMING UP IN DWT LATE NIGHT:

We'll catch up with our Siam-bound travelers in future "Perelman Tonight" installments.

In tomorrow night's "Sunday Classics" preview we begin preparing for a special conjunction of artist (conductor Bruno Walter) and repertory (Wagner's Siegfried Idyll).

Come Sunday night, I'm thinking it might be a good time for some more Will Cuppy -- say, from The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody.

THURBER TONIGHT (including BENCHLEY, WILL CUPPY, WOLCOTT GIBBS, RING LARDNER, BOB AND RAY, E. B. WHITE, JEAN SHEPHERD, and PERELMAN TONIGHT): Check out the series to date

#

Perelman Tonight: Hooray for Hollywood -- Part 4 of "The Swiss Family Perelman"

Illustration by Al Hirschfeld

I was privileged to overhear a couple in the
Vista Dome engaged in a vital discussion.

"No band of Polish immigrants setting foot in the New World could have displayed quite so creamy a mélange of sullenness, martyrdom, and disillusion as my little troupe that winter morning aboard the Oakland ferry. Shivering in an icy rain amid our myriad traps, the ranee and the lambkins glowered at San Francisco and filed a long, sorrowful beef. 'He said there were gonna be coconuts,' ran the chant."

-- from tonight's installment of "Low Bridge -- Everybody Down"

by Ken

Last night we left the Perelman clan wending its way on an assortment of rolling stock from Chicago westward. As the paterfamilias put it:

Of the dozen-odd transcontinental trips I have made in the past decade, the present was unquestionably the most circuitous. As nearly as I could ascertain, we reached San Francisco less by steering a westerly course than by closing in on it in decreasing circles. Every few hundred miles, our car was shunted onto a siding and attached to a railroad whose dining cars were even more unspeakable than the last.

As we're about to discover, however, eventually the train trip became less arduous.


FOR PART 2 OF "LOW BRIDGE -- EVERYBODY
DOWN," CLICK HERE


THURBER TONIGHT (including BENCHLEY, WILL CUPPY, WOLCOTT GIBBS, RING LARDNER, BOB AND RAY, E. B. WHITE, JEAN SHEPHERD, and PERELMAN TONIGHT): Check out the series to date

#

Perelman Tonight: California or bust -- Part 3 of "The Swiss Family Perelman"

The journey begins!

"Friends, I'm not rich in worldly goods, but let
me say this. What's mine is mine."

[Note: You have to imagine these two halves
of the Hirschfeld drawing side by side.]

"Of the dozen-odd transcontinental trips I have made in the past decade, the present was unquestionably the most circuitous. As nearly as I could ascertain, we reached San Francisco less by steering a westerly course than by closing in on it in decreasing circles."

-- from tonight's installment of "Low Bridge -- Everybody Down"

by Ken

The last two nights we've read the first chapter, "Rancors Aweigh" (part 1 and part 2), of SJP's saga of his family schlepp to the Orient, The Swiss Family Perelman (originally published serially in Holiday magazine). Last night we left the travelers at (the old, undestroyed) Penn Station in New York, preparing for their cross-country train trip to catch the S.S. President Cleveland for the voyage across the Pacific. (The above sliced-in-two drawing is actually left over from that chapter. It depicts the actual onset of the journey, with the family bidding adieu to the hands-open building staff outside their apartment building on Washington Square, before making the cab trip to Penn Station.)

It's a long and eventful trip from New York to Oakland, then down to Los Angeles, where they have ten days before the President Cleveland departs. We're going to make the trip in three parts.


FOR PART 1 OF "LOW BRIDGE -- EVERYBODY
DOWN," CLICK HERE


THURBER TONIGHT (including BENCHLEY, WILL CUPPY, WOLCOTT GIBBS, RING LARDNER, BOB AND RAY, E. B. WHITE, JEAN SHEPHERD, and PERELMAN TONIGHT): Check out the series to date

#

Perelman Tonight: San Francisco-bound -- Part 2 of "The Swiss Family Perelman"

"The more charitable among our friends took it upon themselves to scotch these old wives' tales. 'He's merely had a nervous breakdown,' they said loyally. 'You can tell by the way he drums his fingers when she's talking.' Our children, they added, were not real albinos, nor was it true I had been made contact man for a white slave ring in Saigon. I was much too yellow."

-- from the conclusion of Chapter 1, "Rancors Aweigh"

by Ken

Last night we heard our hero waxing rhapsodic about his beloved Orient -- based on hisround-the-world trip, chronicled in Westward, Ha! (of which we sampled the early chapters).

I wish I were back there this minute! Those gentle, courteous people, those age-old temples, those placid winding canals overhung with acacia ----" Overhung with nostalgia and a little cordial I had taken to ward off a chll, I gave way to racking sobs.

And then, when he was "at my most vulnerable," his wife "struck off the veneer of civilization and struck like a puff adder," announcing, "Let's go!"

Once the paterfamilias grasped that his wife was actually proposing transplanting the household to Siam, he underwent an instant change of outlook toward the pestilential East, explaining "as patiently as I could that Siam was a vast malarial marsh, oppressively hot and crowded with underprivileged folk scratching out a submarginal existence."

But there was no helping it -- the Perelmans were Siam-bound. Tonight, concluding "Rancors Aweigh," the first chapter of The Swiss Family Perelman, we learn how the young Perelmans took the news of their impending adventure.


FOR PART 2 OF "RANCORS AWEIGH," CLICK HERE


THURBER TONIGHT (including BENCHLEY, WILL CUPPY, WOLCOTT GIBBS, RING LARDNER, BOB AND RAY, E. B. WHITE, JEAN SHEPHERD, and PERELMAN TONIGHT): Check out the series to date

#

Perelman Tonight: Launching yet another journey, "The Swiss Family Perelman"

"In the angle of the obdurate outthrust jaw, buckwheat-flecked from the morning meal, one read quenchless resolve, a nature scornful of compromise and dedicated to squeezing the last nickel out of any enterprise."

-- from tonight's installment of "Rancors Aweigh,"
the opening chapter of Swiss Family Pearlman

by Ken

In case you haven't gotten it yet, tonight we're going to launch our man, this time accompanied by his family, on another travel odyssey. Like the round-the-world trip of Westward Ha!, this journey was originally chronicled for Holiday magazine, with illustrations by Perelman's old friend and collaborator, the great theater illustrator Al Hirschfeld.


FOR THE OPENING SALVO OF THE SWISS
FAMILY PERELMAN, CLICK HERE


THURBER TONIGHT (including BENCHLEY, WILL CUPPY, WOLCOTT GIBBS, RING LARDNER, BOB AND RAY, E. B. WHITE, JEAN SHEPHERD, and PERELMAN TONIGHT): Check out the series to date

#

Perelman Tonight: Departure day looms -- Part 2 of "Westward Ha!"

"In the cold gray light of a winter dawn they gathered at the airport to bid me Godspeed, the gallant band of relatives who had stuck by me through thick and thin like leeches. Tears streamed down the cheeks of cousins and nephews who now would have to go back to work."

-- from tonight's installment of Westward Ha!

by Ken

In last night's installment of Westward Ha!, our man's announcement of his plan to travel round the world for Holiday magazine -- accompanied by his old pal Al Hirschfeld, doing illustrations -- didn't produce quite the effect he expected from his family.

"Well, folks," I said casually, "Daddy's off to the Seven Seas." Unfortunately, at this precise moment my foot encountered a roller skate lying athwart the threshold. As my wife and the dwarfs looked up in astonishment, I ricocheted across the room, clawed ineffectually at the toile de Jouy drapes, and stemming myself with a Christiania turn, crashed to the floor, taking a cloisonné vase with me. The memsahib sighed heavily.

"It's no use trying to conceal it any longer, children," she told them. "He drinks."

"Does he beat you, too, Mummy?" demanded the boy, a manly little fellow of ten, as he took a step forward and doubled his fists.

Neverheless, the soon-to-be world traveler finds himself in a whirlwind making preparations for departure.


FOR TONIGHT'S INSTALLMENT
OF WESTWARD HA!, CLICK HERE


COMING SUNDAY-THURSDAY IN BOB AND RAY TONIGHT: Act II of Bob and Ray: The Two and Only


UPDATE: The continuing saga of Westward Ha!

By popular demand (yes, I can read minds), we're going to return to Westward Ha!, probably the week after next, and see if we can't at least get our intrepid world travelers the heck out of the country.


THURBER TONIGHT (including BENCHLEY, WILL CUPPY, WOLCOTT GIBBS, RING LARDNER, BOB AND RAY, E. B. WHITE, JEAN SHEPHERD, and PERELMAN TONIGHT): Check out the series to date

#

Perelman Tonight er, Panetta Today: Beware of the coming cyber-Pearl Harbor

Warning: This is not a drill, or an outing of "Perelman Tonight."

by Ken

from Huffpost-slash-AOL News:

CIA Chief Leon Panetta: Cyberattack Could Be 'Next Pearl Harbor'

Appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee for a confirmation hearing for his appointment as the secretary of defense, Leon Panetta warned that the U.S. could face cyberwarfare in battles to come.

“The next Pearl Harbor we confront could very well be a cyber attack that cripples our power systems, our grid, our security systems, our financial systems, our governmental systems,” Panetta said.

Though he talked on subjects ranging from Libya to withdrawing troops from Afghanistan to the war on terrorism, Panetta highlighted his concerns regarding the U.S.'s preparedness for cyberattacks.

“This is a real possibility in today’s world,” he said. “As a result, I think we have to aggressively be able to counter that. It is going to take both defensive measures as well as aggressive measures to deal with it.”

The Obama administration recently unveiled its proposal for global cybersecurity. Statements from the Pentagon have also indicated that the government will consider cyberattacks originating from foreign countries to be equivalent to acts of war meriting military response.

This sounds pretty serious, chief, and I'll bet it would help if we all went out today and took some "aggressive measures" -- like maybe abridging some civil cyberliberties? Wasn't it Justice Brandeis who said, "Better safe than sorry"? (Possibly not. I always have trouble keeping track of those justices and all they say. They're regular Chatty Cathies.)

Anyway, here's the thing, chief. It's hard not to at least crack a smile from dire warnings issued by someone who looks like, well --


This is all I'm saying. You can get back to whatever you were doing now, chief. Preparing for that move to the Pentagon, isn't it? Probably there'll be lots of stuff to warn us about from there, and aggressive measures to be taken. Just remember, well, you know.

#

Perelman Tonight: It started in Philadelphia -- Part 1 of "Westward Ha!"

"Actually, the whole business began sixteen years ago, as do so many complex ventures, with an unfavorable astrological conjunction, Virgo being in the house of Alcohol."

-- from the opening chapter of Westward Ha!,
"Goodbye Broadway, Hello Mal-de-mer"

by Ken

In 1947 Holiday magazine asked Perelman and his friend and collaborator the brilliant theatrical cartoonist Al Hirschfeld ("a remarkable combination of Walt Whitman, Lawrence of Arabia, and Moe, my favorite waiter at Lindy's") to . . . well, he'll tell you the story in a moment. The saga of their round-the-world trip appeared in Holiday and then were collected as one of Perelman's most successful books, Westward Ha!. I don't know that we're going to get very far into it, but tonight and tomorrow we're going to have the first chapter, as the crazy project is set in motion.


FOR OUR MAIDEN INSTALLMENT OF THE ODD
ODYSSEY OF WESTWARD HA!, CLICK HERE


THURBER TONIGHT (including BENCHLEY, WILL CUPPY, WOLCOTT GIBBS, RING LARDNER, BOB AND RAY, E. B. WHITE, JEAN SHEPHERD, and PERELMAN TONIGHT): Check out the series to date

#

Perelman Tonight: A shameful family secret revealed -- Part 2 of "How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth"

RAPIER WEATHERWAX: I've been running with a pretty serious crowd up at New Haven -- lots of bull sessions about swing and stuff -- and I've been wondering. Where does our money come from?
MILO WEATHERWAX [evasively]: Why -- er -- uh -- the doctor brings it. In a little black bag.
RAPIER: Aw, gee, Dad, I'm old enough to know. Please.
MILO: There, there. Now run along and play with your ponies.
RAPIER: Wouldn't you rather tell me than have me learn it in the gutter?

-- from tonight's installment
of "How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth"

by Ken

Last night in Part 1 of "How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth" (which first appeared in The New Yorker of Jan. 5, 1946), we left off at a moment of high drama in "the library of the luxurious Park Avenue triplex of Mr. and Mrs. Milo Leotard Allardyce DuPlessis Weatherwax," with a shattering exchange of smashed busts by the Mr. and Mrs., Milo and Octavia. Tonight we proceed with this cautionary tale of "the instinct to conceal one's true livelihood from the kiddies, for fear of their possible scorn" (as illustrated by the awful secret that Joan Crawford as Mildred Pierce kept from her daughter, or the humiliating secret of Barbara Hutton Mdivani Reventlow Grant), which Perelman understood is "as normal as snoring."

Perelman was especially moved by the plight of Ms. Hutton Mdivani Reventlow Grant, the Woolworth heiress familiarly known as "The Poor Little Rich Girl" for her frequently troubled life, who had reportedly been stung to learn that her ex-husband Kurt "had gone out of his way to tell Lance his mother's money came from the ten-cent store."

The item poses all sorts of interesting questions. What constitutes going out of your way to tell a lad his mother's money came from forty or fifty thousand ten-cent stores? How did Lance take the news? Did he, in the first shock of revelation, force his father to his knees and demand retraction of the slur? Did he fling himself with a choked cry into the Countess' lap, all tears and disillusion, or did he heap coals on her head? Mr. Ventura does not say. . . . I hope that the dimly analogous situation which follows, served up for convenience in a dramatic fricassee, may shed some light on the matter and bring chaos out of confusion.

Prepare to meet yet another about-to-be victim of a mortifying family disclosure, the Weatherwaxes' son Rapier, "a blueblood to his fingertips" ("albeit somewhat spoiled").


FOR THE CONCLUSION OF THE "DRAMATIC FRICASSEE" OF "HOW SHARPER THAN A SERPENT'S TOOTH," CLICK HERE


TOMORROW IN PERELMAN TONIGHT: Part 1 of Westward Ha!


THURBER TONIGHT (including BENCHLEY, WILL CUPPY, WOLCOTT GIBBS, RING LARDNER, BOB AND RAY, E. B. WHITE, JEAN SHEPHERD, and PERELMAN TONIGHT): Check out the series to date

#

Perelman Tonight: Perelman the mini-dramatist -- Part 1 of "How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth"

"How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth" first
appeared in The New Yorker of Jan. 5, 1946.

"The instinct to conceal one's true livelihood from the kiddies, for fear of their possible scorn, is as normal as snoring. A highly solvent gentleman in Forest Hills, a vestryman and the father of three, once told me in wine that for thirty years, under twelve different pseudonyms, he had supplied the gamiest kind of pulp fiction to Snappy Stories and Flynn's, although his children believed him to be a stockbroker."

-- from "How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth"

by Ken

I know we left Acres and Pains hanging after our third installment on Thursday. I hope you'll want to pursue it on your own.

Following the rude interruption of last night's "special edition" of "Thurber Tonight," devoted to last night's Thurber celebration at the 92nd Street Y with guests including Thurber's daughter Rosemany, we return to our regularly scheduled programming. We were already scheduled to move on to a piece cast in a form Perelman was extremely fond of: a prose setup, often from a literary or other written source, or even -- as in this case -- a movie, which he spun into the basis of an illustrative playlet. (You see, all those wasted years in Hollywood didn't go entirely to waste!)

I thought the whole of "How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth" would run kind of long for a single installment, but the problem in splitting it up is that the setup is considerably shorter than the playlet. To compensate -- and I hope to whet your appetite for the minidrama that follows -- I've included in Part 1 the extensive stage setting. (Not to worry, it will be repeated along with the actual drama in tomorrow night's installment.)


FOR PART 1 OF "HOW SHARPER THAN
A SERPENT'S TOOTH," CLICK HERE


THURBER TONIGHT (including BENCHLEY, WILL CUPPY, WOLCOTT GIBBS, RING LARDNER, BOB AND RAY, E. B. WHITE, JEAN SHEPHERD, and PERELMAN TONIGHT): Check out the series to date

#

Perelman Tonight: Finding a "country" identity -- Part 3 of "Acres and Pains"

"At sundown, when the day's loafing was done, I generally repaired to the village store with a quid of cut plug in my cheek, and spent the evening sullenly spitting on my bluchers and cursing the Administration."

-- from Chapter Five of Acres and Pains

by Ken

We've been reading Perelman's account of his time as a put-upon country squire, Acres and Pains -- the first chapter Tuesday night, the next two last night, recounting the horror of his discovery of just what sort of property he had acquired and the even greater horror of his discovery of the sorts of people he was now living amongst.

We left him last night in the company of the impeccable neighbor Grundy, owner of a flawless house ("thirty-five rooms and ten baths -- snug but adequate for his needs," with an attic "hand-hewn out of solid cherry, with burled walnut floors"), and for that matter a flawless life; his remodeling had been accomplished effortlessly at a cost of just a few dollars.

"Tell you what I'd do if I were you," he concluded. "I'd pitch a tent outside and use the dwelling for a cow stable. Only watch out where you camp; the grass is full of black widows." He left, whistling the "Dead March" from Saul, and I entered the house to find my wife in tears. She cried for six days and on the seventh created apple butter. It was good, but not like the woman's next door.

FOR PART 3 OF ACRES AND PAINS, CLICK HERE


SUNDAY IN PERELMAN TONIGHT: Part 1 of "How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth"


THURBER TONIGHT (including BENCHLEY, WILL CUPPY, WOLCOTT GIBBS, RING LARDNER, BOB AND RAY, E. B. WHITE, JEAN SHEPHERD, and PERELMAN TONIGHT): Check out the series to date

#

Perelman Tonight: The shock of the new home -- Part 2 of "Acres and Pains"

"Like any greenhorn from the city, I used to choke up freely at the sight of the man with the hoe. Every bumpkin I encountered reminded me of Daniel Webster; his dreariest platitude had the dignity and sweep of Walt Whitman's verse. Selecting one noble old patriarch, who I was sure had served with John Brown at Harpers Ferry, I commissioned him to paint the barn. Several days later, he notified me that forty-seven gallons were exhausted. 'No use skimpin',' he warned."

-- from Chapter Two of Acres and Pains

by Ken

Last night we plunged into Acres and Pains, Perelman's account of his decade-plus "career as a country squire," and learned the chilling story of the "little old lady" (almost thirty . . . very well preserved") whose "mutual love for wildflowers and jam" eventually led to his signing "some sort of document, the exact nature of which escaped me," until he discovered that the card she had handed him read "Licensed Real-Estate Agent," and he had just committed himself to buying his passport to country living.

I still have the card in my upper bureau drawer. Right next to it, in a holster, is a Smith & Wesson .38 I'm holding in escrow for the lady the next time we meet. And we will -- don't you worry. I've got plenty of patience. That's one thing you develop in the country.

FOR PART 2 OF ACRES AND PAINS, CLICK HERE


THURBER TONIGHT (including BENCHLEY, WILL CUPPY, WOLCOTT GIBBS, RING LARDNER, BOB AND RAY, E. B. WHITE, JEAN SHEPHERD, and PERELMAN TONIGHT): Check out the series to date

#