Save me a spot

It is a Wednesday in July, which means that tonight is Concerts on the Square. From my office window overlooking Pinckney Street just off the Square, I already can see groups of music lovers staggering toward the Capitol with their coolers and camp chairs.

The time is 1:56 p.m.; the music starts at 7. Just how early do people start showing up for this thing?

Blast from the past

Lo, I have unearthed some of my earliest journalistic creations, including an unsigned short I wrote during my tenure as an intern at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, ca. 1998-1999. The topic: fallout shelters. I also wrote a couple of entries in the magazine's short-lived Web Watch series.

Couture

Read my Daily Page report on the always-interesting window dressings of St. Vincent de Paul.

Windy

Just back from Chicago where I a) saw the Police at Wrigley Field, b) viewed giant ferns at the Garfield Park Conservatory, c) was sad to learn that Trader Vic's at the Palmer House has closed, for now at least, and d) saw a Preston Sturges film I'd never seen, Christmas in July -- on the big screen of LaSalle Bank Cinema, no less, plus a Merrie Melody ("Robin Hood Daffy") and a Three Stooges short.

Attesting to the savvy of the LaSalle Cinema folks is the fact that the Stooges flick, "Healthy, Wealthy and Dumb," had virtually the same premise as Christmas in July: a poor sap wins a slogan contest on the radio, or seems to, and hilarity ensues.

More on the Police soon, but just now I'm exhausted.

Be heard

In this brave new world of my updated Blogger template, reader comments seemed not to be working for a time. But I have fixed that.

Hello, world

It's a new day.

What's that device

Time for another installment of What's That Device, the Back With Interest series that explores the use of rhetorical figures in the culture around us.

Today's example I read in Sunday's edition of Listen Up, the Wisconsin State Journal column that every week features lyrics from the popular hits of the day, in order to "provide parents with a better idea of what their children are hearing." Listen Up actually was the inspiration for What's That Device, in ways that even I don't completely understand.

So behold this pop lyric. It's from the tune "Nobody's Perfect" off the soundtrack album of "Hannah Montana," the smash Disney Channel series:

Everybody makes mistakes
Everybody has those days
Everybody knows what, what I'm talkin' 'bout
Everybody gets that way

This is an instance of anaphora, which Richard Lanham's indispensable Handlist of Rhetorical Terms defines as "Repetition of the same word at the beginning of successive clauses or verses."

A frequently cited example of anaphora is Winston Churchill's "we shall fight on the beaches" speech ("we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields, blah blah blah"). But as it happens, "Hannah Montana" features the country icon Billy Ray Cyrus, whose daughter Mylie plays Hannah herself, and his signature line-dancing hit "Achy Breaky Heart" provides an example of anaphora that's even catchier than the Churchill:

You can tell the world you never was my girl
You can burn my clothes when I'm gone
You can tell your friends just what a fool I've been
And laugh and joke about me on the phone

I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. The tree with the mullet.