OF A GOLDEN AGE

jerry lewis: “in 1954, a child diagnosed with muscular dystrophy was given a death sentence. he was gone in a year. a child today diagnosed with any of the neuromuscular diseases can go for twenty years. so you want to talk to me about using pity? i don’t care what i have to use. i used to say, if there’s a guy in a bar, and you tell me that if i become a transvestite i can get a hundred bucks out of him, i’ll dress up and get it if it’s for my kids.”

john kerry: “if a lot of money is put behind a lie, it will become the truth for some people — particularly if they don’t get enough of the real truth. i take the blame for not making certain that there was money behind the real truth.”

neil young: “it’s like having two eyes. you either look through one eye or you look through the other. or you look through both of them. sex is sex. love is love. love and sex is clear vision.”

bob saget: “i was in this movie with richard pryor called critical condition. one day we were shooting in a hospital. he picked up one of those scrub brushes they have and he said, ’see this side with the hard bristles? that’s what they used to take my skin off after the fire.’”

salman rushdie: “for a long time my question was: but was shakespeare good in bed? and i’m afraid the terrible answer is that he probably was.”

b.b. king: “i don’t have a favorite song that i’ve written. but i do have a favorite song: ‘always on my mind,’ the willie nelson version. if i could sing it like he do, i would sing it every night.”

tony curtis: “i was in palm beach with joe kennedy just before the inauguration. we were sitting in this study having a drink when the phone rings. he’s listening for a while and then he gestures for me to come over and sit next to him. jack is reading the inaugural address he’s working on over the phone: ‘ask not what your country can do for you. ask what you can do for your country.’”

today in class, shawn gillen saw ansel’s twirly handlebar mustache.

and said, “ansel, that mustache is kickass. i couldn’t grow a mustache like that with all the testosterone pills in the world.”

as part of a faculty debate over workload, a beloit professor passed along to me a (now-infamous) recent email to the faculty from another professor, john rapp. here is an excerpt:

“Of course we should help explain to our students what it takes to be good college teachers and how research keeps us on top of and more energized about our fields, better able to use cutting edge materials in our classes, better able to take and thus give criticism, etc., but in the end the students’ appalling ignorance of what we do means to me that they should not have the determining voice in this decision.”